Germany committing to ODF and open document standards - The Document Foundation Blog
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Digital sovereignty is of vital importance for data freedom. If governments and organisations use proprietary or pseudo-standard formats, they limit the tools that citizens can use to access data. So we’re happy to see that the IT Planning Council in Germany is committing to move to the Open Document Format – a fully standardised format […]
  • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    16·
    5 days ago

    Infuriating that this isn’t the standard everywhere.

    Surprised the EU hasn’t looked into it, even. The default behaviour to use proprietary MS formats is clearly intended to damage competitors by reducing compatibility.

    I’d call that a textbook case of abuse of dominant market position. How is it any different to Google doing crap like preferring their own products in Google searches?

  • A_norny_mousse@feddit.org
    7·
    5 days ago

    Machine translation of the linked German article:

    Decision 2025/06

    The IT planning council finds that open exchange formats are necessary for the nationwide cooperation and welcomes the decision of the Digital Minister Conference. Open formats and open interfaces are an important building block for the necessary transformation process of public administration in Germany on the way to more digital sovereignty and innovations.

    The IT planning council is committed to ensuring that open formats such as the Open Document Format (ODF) are increasingly being used in public administration and will become the standard for document exchange by 2027. He commissioned the standardization board with the implementation.

    The IT planning council also recognizes that the exchange of documents by e-mail is no longer up to date for the preparation and follow-up of conferences for the preparation and follow-up. He commissioned the Fitko to present a concept for providing a collaboration solution up to the 48th session.

    This is a big thing actually. Although the phrasing still sounds a bit vague to my ears: “The IT planning council is committed to ensuring that open formats (…) will become the standard for document exchange by 2027” is not the same as “Open formats will become the standard for document exchange by 2027”…

    • onlinepersona@programming.dev
      1·
      3 days ago

      With the current conservative government Germany has, the same that fucked up the country for 15 years kept the country “stable” for 15 years, it sounds like their promise for river internet. What’s German river penetration like nowadays? 5%? After 20 years of “investment”?

      Lol. It’s more likely that the US will get a grip and Microsoft or even Apple can swoop in an sell their crap to politicians.

      Anti Commercial-AI license

  • MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml
    91·
    5 days ago

    Weird, how they suddenly can do when it finally matters. National security more important than coffers of money, huh?

    • hellofriend@lemmy.world
      2·
      2 days ago

      I mean, you should be happy about that. If it was the other way around then your government would sell your country out from under you. See: America.