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Germany's Sovereign Digital Stack Mandates ODF: a Landmark Validation of Open Document Standards - TDF Community Blog
blog.documentfoundation.orgThe Document Foundation (TDF), the non-profit entity behind LibreOffice, welcomes the inclusion of the Open Document Format (ODF) as a mandated standard format in Germany’s Deutschland-Stack, the federal government’s sovereign digital infrastructure framework for all public administrations. The Stack, published by the German Federal Ministry for Digital and State Modernisation (Bundesministerium für Digitales und Staatsmodernisierung), establishes the technical standards for a shared, interoperable and sovereign digital infrastructure serving all Germany’s public administrations. Under the framework’s “Semantic Technologies and Real-Time Analytics” pillar, ODF and PDF/UA are explicitly named as the two mandated document formats, to the exclusion of proprietary alternatives. “This is not a recommendation or a preference, it is a mandate,” said Florian Effenberger, Executive Director of The Document Foundation. “Germany’s decision to anchor ODF at the heart of its national sovereign stack confirms what we have argued for years: open, vendor-neutral document formats are not a niche concern for some technology specialists and FOSS advocates. They are a fundamental infrastructure for democratic, interoperable and sovereign public administrations.” The Deutschland-Stack is grounded in a set of principles that align with TDF’s long-standing advocacy positions. The framework adopts a “Made in EU first” principle, requires open interfaces and local data storage,
An absolute tangent, but why are certain worlds in German “glued togetht”?
“Bundesministerium für Digitales und Staatsmodernisierung”
Isn’t this for “digital and state modernization”? Like, modernization applies to both, right? Why is one merged together but not the other?
No, modernization only applies to Staatsmodernisierung. Otherwise you’d say something like Digital- und Staatsmodernisierung. But that would make little sense as Digitalmodernisierung would mean that we already have all the necessary digital processes but they are old and need an overhaul.
A rough translation of Digitales on the other hand would be “things that are digital”, which implies that it also includes improving digital processes.
Makes sense, got it. So if it applied to both words, the way you’d signal that is by hyphenating the previous word?
Seems so strange to just have a hyphen lying there in the middle of a phrase, but that’s just my lack of familiarity.
Yes exactly! Like for example Hoch- und Tiefbau. You could still write it out: Hochbau und Tiefbau. But to me that just sounds redundant.