openCode relaunch: From software directory to platform for digital sovereignty

Bochum/Berlin, January 15, 2025 - New interface, more services, better user experience: The Center for Digital Sovereignty in Public Administration (ZenDiS) has gone live with a completely revised version of the openCode platform. Currently, more than 5,300 users are already working together in over 2,200 projects. This corresponds to an increase of more than 100 percent in the past 12 months. The relaunch is intended to further accelerate the dynamic development of the platform, significantly expand the reuse of existing open source solutions and enable the public sector to make even greater use of open source software. Projects can now be found much more easily and evaluated directly according to quality criteria. The knowledge area provides a wealth of content to help users get started in the open source world. This includes a license catalog and information on open source criteria and definitions. The relaunch has also made the platform significantly more accessible.

Overcoming the limits of federalism in digitalization

"With the relaunch, we have taken another big step towards our vision: to establish openCode as the central platform for digital sovereignty. For federal, state and local authorities alike," explains Leonhard Kugler, Head of the Platform division at ZenDiS. Originally, openCode was initiated by the IT Planning Council as a platform on which administrative institutions from all over Germany could publish software under an open source license, develop it further together and reuse it. The increased use of open source solutions is a key lever for greater digital sovereignty in public administration and a declared political goal. The Office & Collaboration Suite openDesk is also being developed on openCode. Leonhard Kugler: "The initiative of the IT Planning Council was enormously important because it made cross-administration collaboration on software projects possible for the first time ever in Germany and clarified important issues relating to licensing and compliance aspects. However, the potential of openCode goes far beyond this." The platform is already being used to carry out consultation processes (for example on the target image of the OZG framework architecture), to collaboratively develop standards (for example the UX standard KERN) or to openly discuss digitalization topics (for example in the Open Data Forum of the Federal Office of Administration).

Basis for a secure software supply chain

With the relaunch, the existing potential can now be utilized even better. At the same time, it has created the basis for the gradual expansion of the platform. ZenDiS is continuously expanding the knowledge database on topics relating to licenses, procurement and reuse, adding additional services and promoting exchange within the administration and with the open source ecosystem via an active openCode community. Together with the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), openCode is also currently being developed into the basis for a secure software supply chain and a secure source for software for the administration - including automated quality and security checks for the various phases of software development. The openCode platform can be found at opencode.de.