Germany has mandated the Open Document Format (ODF) as the standard for public administration documents within its new sovereign digital infrastructure framework, the Deutschland-Stack.
Published by the Federal Ministry for Digital and State Modernisation, the framework sets technical standards for a unified, interoperable digital environment across all government levels. It explicitly requires ODF and PDF/UA as document formats, excluding proprietary alternatives from official use.
Just for reference, ODF is an open, ISO-standardized file format widely used by office suites such as LibreOffice. Mandating ODF at the federal level ensures consistent document handling, system compatibility, and long-term accessibility of official records across public institutions.
The Deutschland-Stack supports a broader strategy to build sovereign digital infrastructure using open standards, open interfaces, and reduced reliance on single vendors. The framework also prioritizes local data storage and open source development to limit vendor lock-in in government IT systems.
Florian Effenberger, Executive Director of The Document Foundation, says:
“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.”
Germany’s move aligns with broader European efforts to promote digital sovereignty and interoperability, including the European Interoperability Framework and the Cyber Resilience Act. These policies emphasize the importance of open standards in ensuring secure, transparent, and future-proof digital services.
The Deutschland-Stack is based on decisions from various federal and state bodies and will guide the development of shared digital infrastructure through 2028. As implementation advances, the mandate will shape procurement, software selection, and document workflows across Germany’s public sector.
More information about the framework is available from the official Deutschland-Stack publication (in German). Also, you can check out The Document Foundation’s announcement.
Pls provide a link to the framework and/or statement/publication of the Federal Ministry for Digital and State Modernisation. I didn’t find any on their website https://bmds.bund.de/
Thanks!
Found it. What I did not find is the determination of being mandatory. Any hints?
All good. Except for using “oauth”.
Oauth is a project of the largest IT companies in the USA, like Google, Microsoft etc. Putting all online authentication into the hands of these companies is not exactly what I would call German sovereignty.
I’m not quite sure, I understand the point being made, it’s probably more about the Deutschlandstack suggesting oauth for authorization?
OAuth is a specification for an Authorization protocol and it is perfectly reasonable and done without problem in practice to operate an (or several) oauth provider(s) as part of the Deutschland stack platform.
Facebook et al. would only enter the picture if Germany decided to include them as oauth providers. Is that proposed anywhere? I couldn’t find it in the Deutschland stack paper, didn’t look very thoroughly, though.
Sounds good and an excellent tendency (will be good to be in general).
BTW had to send some document that was originally locally created as .odt to local .gov site (not in Germany) but it stated that they accept only: doc, docx, xls, xlsx, pdf, jpg, bmp, p7s, asice, rtf, mp3, mp4, avi, mpg, zip.
Had to export and send it as .pdf but it would be nicer to use just original file and format.
(also tried to save as .docx but it looked like Goggle at least didn’t display its formatting properly, who knows how ms would display it but exported .pdf looked fine)
Only Office and WPS Office are the best to keep Microsoft formatting from what I have found if you are forced to deal with their locked in crappy Office Suite. The only thing I don’t like about Only Office is it opens the whole suite each time instead of just a word document, spreadsheet, .pdf etc. etc. etc.
While WPS Office is not opensource it is free to individual users. Only office is not open source but offers a community edition that is open source and again free to individual users.
Software Primary Document Format Other Supported Formats
ONLYOFFICE .docx (Microsoft Word format) .odt, .ott, .txt, .html, .pdf
WPS Office .wps (WPS Writer format) .doc, .docx, .odt, .txt, .pdf, and more
FreeOffice is also very good to keep Microsoft formatting.
Is from Germany, is not opensource it is free to individual users.
https://www.freeoffice.com/en/
ONLYOFFICE .docx (Russian oligarchs are behind the companyt)
WPS Office .wps (Chinese)