Just minutes ago, the new German ‘traffic light’ coalition from SPD, Greens and FDP released the results of weeks of negotiation: their coalition agreement. A key component of this extensive agreement are commitments to furthering the digitalization of the German government, in particular through the use of open source and with an eye towards Digital Sovereignty of the German government.
„We want to increase the strategic sovereignty of Europe.“
„Municipalities must benefit from federal funds and be able to adopt solutions developed within the framework of the One-for-all principle. (Public Money Public Code)“
„We require open standards for public IT projects. Development contracts should typically be commissioned as open source, the corresponding software is generally made public. On the basis of a multi-cloud strategy and open interfaces as well as strict security and transparency requirements, we are building a public administration cloud.“
„Government data from all administrative levels are to be made available in standardized formats in the future. The agricultural data room in Gaia-X as the basis of a European data infrastructure with clear usage rights for farmers to the farm-specific data, which they helped to create, is being further developed with standardized interfaces. Open source formats are expressly supported.“
The parties will now follow their respective processes to ratify the agreement.
A broader trend
This of course part of a broader trend in German government. Four years ago, the German federal government started with the Bundescloud based on Nextcloud, and around the same time, RegioIT started offering Nextcloud to many schools and educational organizations. Last year, the state of Baden württemberg, though its central IT service center, Landesoberbehörde IT Baden-Württemberg (BITBW), also opted for Nextcloud and the roll-out is ongoing. And just this week, in an interview with the c’t Magazine, Schleswig-Holstein minister Jan Philipp Albrecht explained the state is moving 25.000 systems to open source software, which includes Nextcloud for cloud collaboration.
A strong commitment
We applaud the government for their commitment to Public Money, Public Code, a principle advocated for for years by the Free Software Foundation Europe and many others. Software paid for by tax payers should be available to those tax payers to build upon and improve, instead of being held hostage by private companies!
We also appreciate the support for open standards and strong requirements on security and transparency for government cloud. We believe only locally hosted open source can deliver this in a sufficient way and Gaia-X or otherwise European, open standards based platforms should be a hard requirement. The control the Government can extort over the data of its own operations and citizens should be absolute, and thanks to a move to locally hosted, open source software, this can finally be ensured.
Our latest release supports a healthy meeting culture, introduces the Nextcloud Assistant and emphasizes user-centric design, transparency and user control. Thank you to our community! 💙 Nextcloud would not be the same without our dedicated, encouraging community. A huge thank you to the thousands of community members for making this release the best it can […]
As the Conference is fast approaching, we would like to additionally present you with the full program for the weekend. From our keynote speakers and panelists, to lightning talks and workshops, we have a full agenda booked that we cannot wait to experience with you! Keynote speakers Nextcloud is pleased to welcome the following keynote […]
Video calls and online chats are second nature for us at this point. Taking your work call virtually or communicating with your manager online can all be done from home and this style of working is generally accepted. However, what is not universally accepted is the fact that Big Tech firms are ambiguous about what […]
Over the last year, AI has become a popular topic. Some is hype, some is substance. Some is good, some is bad. We want to give you the good, not the bad, and ignore the hype! AI has a ton of opportunity – but also risk. So we put you in control – off by […]
As part of Schleswig-Holstein's state digitization strategy, the state chancellery has announced they will work with Nextcloud to develop AI for working with government documents. This comes just after we announced the first private AI assistant last weekend with Hub 6. The German state already uses Nextcloud and their AI strategy aligns with our work on ethical, local AI technologies.
Last Thursday, the Digital Markets Act went into effect with the first ‘Gatekeepers designations’. The new EU rules would require Microsoft to stop some of its alleged market-distorting behavior by March 2024, but even if implemented swiftly it is unlikely to create a more equitable market. What we need is more action from the European […]
We save some cookies to count visitors and make the site easier to use. This doesn't leave our server and isn't to track you personally!
See our Privacy Policy for more information. Customize