Digital Minister advocates for open-source competition to improve administration

Federal Digital Minister Dr. Karsten Wildberger is the patron of this year's Open Source Business Alliance open source competition. Wildberger is sending out a signal for the promotion of digital sovereignty in Germany, particularly in light of the ongoing debate about dependencies on non-European cloud providers: "Open source software is an essential tool for a digital administration that is efficient, transparent, and sovereign." Fittingly, the Center for Digital Sovereignty (ZenDiS) is supporting the competition as the conceptual sponsor.

For OSBA members in particular, this support is likely to go hand in hand with the hope that the Federal Minister for Digital Affairs will more actively promote the goal of making open source software and open standards the central principles of IT architecture in the public sector. Accordingly, Peter Ganten, Chairman of the Open Source Business Alliance, says: "Federal Minister Wildberger's patronage of the open source competition underlines the importance of open source software for a functioning digital administration."

Competition for digital sovereignty

The OSBA's open source competition is aimed specifically at public administrations at federal, state and municipal level as well as public companies and institutions that use open source software as a central building block for digital transformation. The aim of the competition is to recognize projects that pursue a particularly innovative use of open source solutions and OSS strategies and thus strengthen digital sovereignty and innovative capacity. The categories include specialist procedures for administrative services, internal administrative applications and sustainable digital transformation strategies.

From now until September 30, 2025, the community can vote for one of the 39 participating projects on the competition website. The winners will be honored at the Smart Country Convention (SCCON) on October 2, 2025.

(fo)