BIG NEWS: Germany has just made the standard Open Document Format (ODF) mandatory
The German federal government has quietly taken an extremely significant step: hidden amongst the technical specifications of the Deutschland-Stack – the rules that will govern the sovereign digital infrastructure supporting public administration at all levels of government, from federal ministries to local council offices – there is a short but highly significant line.
Under the technological pillar “Semantic technologies and real-time analysis”, the document mandates the use of just two document formats: ODF and PDF/UA. That is all. Two open, vendor-neutral formats, defined by international standardisation bodies. OOXML, Microsoft’s closed, proprietary format, is not on the list.
What is the Deutschland-Stack?
The Deutschland-Stack is the German federal government’s project for a sovereign, interoperable digital infrastructure that complies with European standards. It is neither a pilot project nor a policy discussion paper, but the result of a coordinated decision between the Digital Minister, the Federal Chancellery and the Chancellor, backed by the coalition agreement. The document sets out the standards that will govern how all federal public administrations, at all levels, build, procure and manage their digital systems, and envisages concrete implementation by 2028.
It is worth reading its architectural principles carefully. “Made in the EU first.” Reduction of lock-in effects. Open interfaces and local data storage. Open-source development as the default. These are not merely talking points, but the stated governance criteria for Germany’s digital infrastructure. In this context, ODF is not listed as a mere preference or fallback solution, but as a standard document format, alongside PDF/UA for accessibility-compliant documents.
Why this is important beyond Germany
Germany is the European Union’s largest economy, and its decisions have the power to influence the market. Suppliers serving the German public sector will be required to support the ODF standard, and this could serve as an incentive for all other EU Member States that are building compatible infrastructure to follow suit.
The significance of the Deutschland-Stack goes beyond this and represents something extremely important: a formal, high-level political recognition that standard, open document formats are an element of infrastructure rather than a preference; that interoperability is not a secondary feature to be considered later; and that true digital sovereignty requires open standards at every level of the stack, with the document layer being no exception.
The argument about risk is turned inside-out
To date, the adoption of ODF by European public administrations has been hindered by the risks associated with moving away from the most widely used format on the market: there could be problems with document display and workflows, whilst staff might require further training. In this context, the risk of change is always greater than the risk of standing still.
The Deutschland-Stack mandate completely reverses this logic. By choosing ODF as the standard – and not OOXML, ‘the most widely used format’ imposed by the dominant vendor – the German federal government recognises that the greatest risk to interoperability, sovereignty and the long-term public interest lies with the proprietary format.
This is the correct perspective, and has been the correct perspective for years. The OOXML Transitional format – used by all proprietary office suites – is not, due to its characteristics (described in other posts), a stable and vendor-independent foundation for public administration, whereas ODF is.
The burden of proof, as The Document Foundation argued in its comments to the European Commission, does not lie with those who advocate open standards, but with those who advocate maintaining lock-in.
What conclusions can be drawn?
The Deutschland-Stack is a fact, not a conclusion. A mandate in a policy document does not yet equate to implementation on the ground, but the direction is unmistakable. And the alignment with what TDF, civil society organisations and advocates of open standards have been arguing for decades is striking.
Open standards are not ideological positions, but practical prerequisites for an interoperable, sovereign and reliable public digital infrastructure. In this context, documents are not marginal, because they are the means by which public administrations communicate with citizens, with one another and with all other institutions. Therefore, the format of documents matters.
The inclusion of ODF in the Deutschland-Stack is not only a confirmation of all this, but an invitation to other EU Member States, the European Commission and all public administrations still using proprietary formats to ask themselves a question: if Germany is making ODF mandatory for its sovereign digital stack, what is stopping you from doing the same?
The text of the Deutschland-Stack (in German) is available at: https://deutschland-stack.gov.de/gesamtbild/
Our sincere thanks to everyone whose hard work has contributed to this success: TDF, which has taken up the mantle of the ODF format’s pioneers and carried it forward over the years; the members of the ODF Technical Committee and the ecosystem partners who have contributed to the format’s development; and all those who have promoted the benefits of the ODF format against all odds.
