What is the strategy of Europe and the German government with regard to the challenges of digitization and digital sovereignty in public authorities? This question was addressed today by EU Commissioner Johannes Hahn and Pia Karger, Head of the Digital Society Department; Information technology in the Ministry of the Interior, at the event “Necessity or Luxury? Digital Sovereignty in Germany and Europe” as part of the German Presidency of the Council of the European Union.

There is no getting around open-source software, explains the Johannes Hahn, EU Commissioner for Budget and Administration in the von der Leyen Commission since December 2019, joined the keynote in Bremen. Above all, the past eight months with Corona have shown the value of digitization, but also that “major investments by the EU are necessary here in order to bring digitization to the wider area.”

Especially the public administration must “do everything possible to achieve digital sovereignty in Europe.” This also includes the software, and European users must “do everything to maintain control over the processes.” Hahn mentions the German Corona app as a positive example and agrees to praise open source software: Open source is independent and strengthens trust. Only the openness of the source enables the common use and the bundling of the efforts of individual authorities. Not least because of this, the EU Commission wants to strengthen open source software and promote a work culture that relies on free software. “Reuse and share, open source wherever possible, sensible and strategically important”. For Hahn, the OSS strategy is a sign of digital change in the EU and the Commission.

A center for digital sovereignty That sounds similar what can be heard in the following panel discussion from the Federal Ministry of the Interior. Among other things, Pia Karger is responsible for IT control, service consolidation as part of the federal IT consolidation and IT procurement and is convinced: the focus is clearly on digital, sovereign administration, she would like us to do ten Years ago, no longer “… discussing software licenses and business models, but being able to present digitally superior solutions that interlink smoothly”. They are already working on a center for digital sovereignty, “In many European countries there are already centers for open source software in administration” We should also have that, although Karger open source software is the most important digital component Sovereignty sees. You are still at the beginning, but discussions are ongoing and concrete ideas are being developed.

When asked what such a center could or should do, Karger replied that one would like to bundle and develop competencies , and to coordinate these with the administration, to publish them and thus to create reliable framework conditions. It should also represent digital sovereignty and open source software as a value in itself. “We are sometimes still at the beginning”. And last but not least, one would like to gain more weight together as a public administration, to represent a common market.

Build up competence, share, develop standards The other participants on the podium also agreed. Prof. Dr. Maria Wimmer heads the administrative informatics / e-government research group at the University of Koblenz-Landau, researching and teaching in the areas of e-government, e-democracy and e-participation, among other things. “We still have to build up a lot of expertise,” she says, and a uniform line within the EU is a challenge that can only be achieved through good governance of the digital solutions, in which the actors work together to develop standards as building blocks.

Peter Ganten, managing director of the Bremen Linux distributor Univention and chairman of the board of the Open Source Business Alliance, agrees and calls on the public sector to develop competence here, “Open source companies like us need competent contractors”. Ganten wants to clear up a misunderstanding: “There is simply no contrast between ‘Do it yourself with open source or buy something ready-made with proprietary software’. Open source is a functioning business model that has produced companies like Red Hat that are designed for 34 Billions were sold, d