Sharing and re-use is a basic efficiency principle in public IT services. In this vein, the German government offers the “Government Site Builder” (GSB) as a basis for governmental websites. The GSB is a web content management solution for the creation, quality assurance, release and publication of content on the internet, intranet and extranet, specifically engineered for the needs of the German public sector. The government sees GSB as a starting point for public administrations to create responsive, meaning mobile-optimised, websites, with different levels of customisation possible. Importantly it also provides a framework that conforms to the technical requirements of the German government and supports the creation of accessible, barrier-free web content.
Yet, Germany’s public IT services wanting to take advantage of such solutions have long struggled with the federal structure of the country, leading to fragmentation and reduced efficiency. A major step to reduce these inefficiencies has been the creation of the ITZBund, or Federal Information Technology Centre, in 2016 and creator of the GSB. The ITZBund is continuing to consolidate the disparate IT services of federal ministries that were previously individual to each ministry.
Since the very first days of digitalisation, sharing and re-use has been a goal for German public services. The framework of the "Kiel resolutions" were first adopted in 1979 and enabled such sharing and re-use of what was then called “automated processes” between the federal, regional and municipal level of German administrations. One of the aspects regulated by the Kiel resolutions was the complicated handling of licensing fees in cases of sharing and re-use and those remain a challenge to this day.
The previous version of the Government Site Builder 7 (GSB 7) was based on a commercial content management system. Therefore, obtaining a licence was a paid component for administrations of the GSB 7 software. With this system, the implementing authorities bear the annual costs themselves.
With GSB 10, ITZBund already decided to adopt an Open Source framework as the basis for the software. Self-hosting or, for federal administrations, hosting by ITZBund were possible. Due to its Open Source nature, from version 10 onwards the use of the GSB software is free of charge for authorities and institutions of the federal administration. With this step ITZBund is already making a robust step to increase the adoption of its offering with administrations, but as a custom software, ITZBund bears the brunt of the development and maintenance costs.
With the planned version 11 of the GSB ITZBund is making the logical next step in its Open Source journey: The adoption of an established Open Source framework with TYPO3. This will mean ITZBund will be able to tap into the power of the Open Source community, reducing development and maintaining costs while profiting from the innovative power of the community. Data shows that about 19% of German governmental websites are currently based on the GSB, while the majority is based on TYPO3. It is thus a sensible step to adopt TYPO3 as the already established framework of choice for government websites and take advantage of the synergistic effects of this migration.
The ITZBund itself sees a number of advantages with this new approach, among them:
- TYPO3 is designed for professional, accessible, secure, stable and scalable use and benefits from an active open source community in German-speaking countries.
- Due to the large scope of relevant functions, fast maintenance and servicing is possible.
- As a result of the widespread use of TYPO3 in the federal administration, a simple GSB migration and quick familiarisation can be expected.
- Long-term support over 3 years is an essential feature for the stability and reliability of the TYPO3 CMS.
This step toward Open Source is in line with the strategic direction of the German government to provide sovereign solutions. Among them the 2018 decision to have the “Federal Cloud” based on the Open Source solution Nextcloud, the establishment of the Centre for Digital Sovereignty under the federal CIO and the creation of the dPhoenixSuite as a standardised public sector software workstation.