"The German government has launched a new Open Source software project called openDesk, which aims to reduce the country’s dependency on proprietary software vendors and support transparency and interoperability.
openDesk is a collection of #OpenSource software modules that are important for day-to-day work in the public sector, such as text creation, file collaboration, project management, email, calendar and messaging."
@janvlug we had this on Brazil once. I was the "public software portal" but it is dead now and we are happily (😔) using tons of proprietary software since
What got me excited about dataport and phoenix is that they build up and hire talent in that field. (dataport is the IT provider of a couple of states https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dataport )
So no matter what happens, more and more OpenSource knowledge gets build up inside the government over time.
People expecting wonders overnight are imho naive.
Public administration has so much legacy, so many processes, so much in house crap. And so much talent using word and excel to be efficient.
It is not even funny.
Add to that a certain mindset that is imho unique for public administration that is not looking to improve but to document failsafe. And it is a perfect mixture of stasis once your processes overwhelm.
@mwfc@mrecondo@janvlug They are already funding and even contributing to at least a few of the included projects. IIRC, some of the work in developing the BwMessenger (Bundeswehr) and BundesMessenger (federal) has already gone back upstream to Element. I believe it’s just a small part of a much larger shift towards digital sovereignty within the EU. Investing in open source software benefits everyone and should be the norm if it’s taxpayer’s money.
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