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Germany has made ODF mandatory as the standard format for documents within its sovereign digital infrastructure. The decision is incorporated into the Deutschland-Stack, the framework governing the development, procurement and management of digital systems for public administration at all levels. This is neither a pilot project nor a recommendation from a working group, but a mandate backed by the federal government and the coalition agreement. The official document has been published by the IT-Planungsrat, the central political steering body comprising the federal government and state governments, which promotes and develops common, user-oriented IT solutions for efficient and secure digital administration in Germany: https://www.it-planungsrat.de/beschluss/b-2026-03-it. At this point, the question for all other European governments is clear: what are you waiting for? With this decision, the distinction between those who care about digital sovereignty and those who do not becomes stark. There are no more excuses Over the years, public administrations in Europe have accumulated a series of tired excuses, long since overtaken by the facts, for not making standard and open document formats mandatory. Let’s examine them one by one. ODF isn’t mature enough. ODF has been an ISO standard since 2006. It is now at version 1.4, with active development,

Every year, millions of students open a laptop and log into Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, surrendering their digital sovereignty to US Big Tech in the process. Teachers use cloud-based editors to assign homework. School administrators manage documents in proprietary formats. This ecosystem runs smoothly and seemingly without friction, but almost no one questions the cost of this normalisation. Unfortunately, the cost is quite high. An invisible resume Schools don’t just teach maths and history; they also teach mental processes, such as how to do research, think critically and interact with tools and institutions. Software is part of this invisible curriculum. A student who has spent years using Microsoft Word or Google Docs as the archetype of “word processing” or “collaboration” respectively has not developed neutral, transferable skills, but has become a future customer. This is not a conspiracy, but rather the way markets work. Microsoft and Google both offer heavily discounted or even free licences to educational institutions, knowing that brand loyalty formed in childhood tends to persist into adulthood and the working world. The licence discount is, in commercial terms, the cost of acquiring a new customer, which schools effectively pay on behalf of the seller. LibreOffice offers

Whenever I talk to other technology users — including CTOs, CSOs and ICT managers, who in theory should have a certain level of expertise — I realise that most of them never consider standards when using applications, devices or websites. Users just want everything to work, but they don’t realise the fundamental role that standards, especially open standards, play in making this happen. Open standards actually offer users a significant advantage over the proprietary solutions they use every day. An open standard is a publicly available set of rules that govern how technology works. Anyone can use, develop or improve them. Examples include HTML for websites, USB for devices and PDF for documents. (And of course, the Open Document Format – ODF – as used by LibreOffice.) These are not owned by any company, and therefore benefit end users. That’s why they’re important to you. 1. You are not tied in Open standards reduce vendor lock-in. This means that users are not forced to use a single product or ecosystem from a single company to have control over their data and tools. For example, documents saved in an open format can be managed with multiple applications. If you change your