Public Money, Public Code

Following a successful pilot project, the northern German federal state of Schleswig-Holstein has decided to move from Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office to Linux and LibreOffice (and other free and open source software) on the 30,000 PCs used in the local government. As reported on the homepage of the Minister-President: Independent, sustainable, secure: Schleswig-Holstein will be a digital pioneer region and the first German state to introduce a digitally sovereign IT workplace in its state administration. With a cabinet decision to introduce the open-source software LibreOffice as the standard office solution across the board, the government has given the go-ahead for the first step towards complete digital sovereignty in the state, with further steps to follow. The term digital sovereignty is very important here. If a public administration uses proprietary, closed software that can’t be studied or modified, it is very difficult to know what happens to users’ data: We have no influence on the operating processes of such [proprietary] solutions and the handling of data, including a possible outflow of data to third countries. As a state, we have a great responsibility towards our citizens and companies to ensure that their data is kept safe with us and we

As political winds shift across the globe, the digital world is not immune to the turbulence. Governments and organizations across the globe are reassessing ...

For years, Europeans have lived comfortably, storing and processing data on servers located in the EU, i.e. on servers physically in the EU, but legally controlled by foreign entities. We celebrated compliance audits and built data centers across the continent, believing that physical location equaled digital safety. But what good is data residency compliance if you cannot be certain you can access your data tomorrow?

Never stray from the way.

Munich's Long History with Open Source in Public Administration IntroductionThis case study is a retrospective on the policies and use of open source solutions in public administration in the German...

Much Sturm und Drang in the world of Open Source with the announcement that the "Mythos" AI is now the ultimate hacker and is poised to unleash havoc on every code base. So should you close all your Open Source projects to make them safe? No. Firstly, all your Open Source code has already been slurped up. It was all ingested for "training purposes" years ago. If it was moderately interesting…