Our Approach to Open Source

Vendor independence is our actual goal, not any particular technology. Open source is one of the most effective means we know to achieve it: software that can be inspected, adapted and operated by other organisations without remaining tied to a specific vendor. That is why the question comes up in every project. It is not a requirement, but it is one of the first things we consider.

Open source is the obvious choice when a solution is meant to be reused across several authorities or federal states, when long-term maintainability without dependence on a single vendor is crucial, or when public funds finance a solution that should follow the principle of "Public Money, Public Code": what is built with public money should, wherever feasible, also be publicly available.We are just as open about when another solution is the better one. Sometimes an established proprietary solution is a better fit for the specific task, the existing system or the timeframe of a project. In every case, the deciding criterion remains the same: your administration should not end up with new dependencies, regardless of what the specific technical answer looks like.

This approach has produced contributions of our own that we make available to the community, such as a form builder with FIM import and XÖV support. Where an open-source solution fits, we also rely on established tools such as Form.io or formsflow.ai.