The renewed government coalition of the city of Hamburg, Germany’s second-largest city, wants an increase in the use of free and open source software. The city is to become an example for digital sovereignty, local politicians announced in early June.
The digital sovereignty pledge is one of five principles for a digital Hamburg in the agreement set out by the renewed coalition of Social Democrats and Greens.
“To achieve the goals of digitisation, Hamburg’s public services must have the competence and the opportunity to control and manage the development and be open about its use of technologies,” the coalition agreement says.
Openness is inherent in open source, the agreement continues. This is why the city will increasingly turn to open source, and in addition will share many of its own software solutions with others.
The SPD and the Greens want to improve Hamburg’s procurement process to give equal chance to a wide variety of business models, including communities of start-ups, and open source licence models.
Exit strategy
In Hamburg the Greens have long been involved in open source software. In 2014, the year before the first SPD/Green coalition, they were already calling for a switch to this type of software to encourage innovation and increase IT security. That year, Alliance 90/The Greens (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) organised a conference on open IT, timed to coincide with the federal government’s IT Summit in the same city. At the alternative ‘Open IT Summit’ the Greens announced their exit strategy for proprietary software.
Reporting on Hamburg’s move towards open source, the German IT trade publication Heise notes that the city follows in the footsteps of the neighbouring state of Schleswig-Holstein. The latter set out to increase its use of open source in 2019. Digital sovereignty is also a theme for the federal government: the country’s Minister of the Interior wants to reduce IT vendor lock-in and give alternatives a chance, Heise writes.
More information:
Hambug SPD/Greens coalition agreement (PDF, in German)
Heise news item (in German)
ZDnet news item
OSOR news item