Commission boosts open and interoperable digital ecosystems for public administrations

The European Commission has taken a significant step towards promoting open and interoperable digital ecosystems for public administrations, as part of its broader efforts to achieve technological sovereignty.  

The European Technological Sovereignty Package, adopted today, outlines a comprehensive approach to reducing the EU's dependence on non-EU providers and promoting digital autonomy. One of the key aspects of this package is the Strategy for EU Open Digital Ecosystem (‘Open source Strategy’) that promotes open and interoperable digital ecosystems on EU level, as well as for public administrations.  

The use of open source in public administrations 

The public administrations’ ability to enforce and implement policies, as well as to deliver public services, increasingly depends on their capacity to understand, shape, and control the technologies on which they rely.  One of the goals of the Commission's  EU Open Digital Ecosystem is to create   reference model for thriving open digital ecosystem for public administrations, where they can confidently build, maintain, and adapt their digital systems in line with European values, regulatory frameworks, and their operational needs.  

Public procurement shift 

The Commission will promote the use of open standards and models in public procurement, ensuring that public authorities can choose the best solutions for their needs, rather than being locked into proprietary systems. The Commission leads by example with its recently awarded Sovereign Cloud tender, that introduced sovereignty as the main criteria as well as the methodology to measure it. This marks a shift from previous procurement practices in the EU where open source providers were disadvantaged as the procedures have been developed around the characteristics of proprietary vendors and focused on bundles of services and itemised prices rather than total cost and overall value. 

Three pillars of the open digital ecosystem  

An open digital ecosystem – sovereign by design – requires action on three fronts: what is built and operated, who sustains it, and how choices are steered over time. This is why the Commission is putting forward a framework built around three mutually reinforcing pillars: trusted assets, empowered communities and strong governance. 

• Trusted assets – A resilient open digital ecosystem for public administrations depends on secure, well-maintained assets such as shared code repositories or flexible licensing schemes. It also relies on the services that can be confidently adopted, shared and reused across organisational boundaries. Trusted open assets are a necessary precondition for sovereignty, security and long-term sustainability. The Commission will work to consolidate the technologies and practices required to develop and maintain them, while addressing structural challenges that public administrations face when adopting open source and open technologies.
• Empowered communities – Open digital ecosystem depends on communities and networks that collectively create, maintain and evolve shared knowledge, assets and services. The Commission will strengthen its internal communities by training and recognising staff that contributes to open source projects. It will simplify its rules on contributions to external projects and expand collaboration with external open source communities.
• Strong governance – the Commission will embed openness and sovereignty-by-design in digital investment and project lifecycles integrating structured assessment criteria into governance checks and maturity frameworks to ensure that control, interoperability, portability and sustainability considerations are systematically evaluated from the earliest design stages. It will review and update the Digital Ready Policy Making framework to further integrate openness, interoperability and sovereignty considerations, and encourage open source reference implementations, ensuring that legislative and strategic initiatives promote reusable, interoperable and transparent digital solutions. 

Strong open source foundations 

The Commission has already implemented important foundations with its previous internal open source strategies, initiating a cultural shift towards open source in the Commission. The creation of the Commission’s Open Source Programme Office (EC OSPO); the launch of code.europa.eu – the code development platform for open source projects for which European Union institutions, bodies, offices and agencies hold the intellectual property rights; publication of the EU Open Source Solutions Catalogue have significantly increased the adoption and visibility of open source and open technologies across Commission services and public administrations. 

Next steps 

The Commission will continue to work with Member States, public administrations, and open source communities to implement the Open source Strategy and promote open and interoperable digital ecosystems for public administrations. This will include providing support for the development of open source solutions, promoting the use of open standards and models, and encouraging the reuse of software developed or purchased by public administrations. By working together, the EU can create a thriving open digital ecosystem for public administrations, enabling them to provide better services to citizens, while also promoting innovation and competition in the digital economy.  

More information 

Press release on European Technological Sovereignty Package

The EU Open Source Strategy

code.europa.eu 

EU Open Source Solutions Catalogue 

Sovereign Cloud tender