The city of Dortmund in Germany decided to adopt open source. On March 25, 2021, the city council of Dortmund decided to use open source software for the administration.
In addition, the software to be developed by management or commissioned for development should be made available to the general public.
This is an exciting decision, as there have been many calls for the administration to move away from its reliance on proprietary software such as Microsoft 365.
On March 25, 2021, the city council decided the following:
- Use open source software where possible and
- Making available any software developed or commissioned for development by management to the general public.
This changes the practice choiceof software from the Dortmund authorities. In the future, management will have to justify any use of proprietary software and why open source software cannot be used.
The approval of this decision for open source software is due to the efforts of Intitive Do-FOSS (from Dortmund-FOSS).
To promote the use of Free Software in public administration, Do-FOSS uses a variety of different ways of dealing with and implementing Free Software. Among other things, Do-FOOS is working with the city of Dortmund to promote the use of Free Software in the city's strategic digitization.
In the early days of Do-FOSS, members initially envisioned writing a letter to the mayor in which members would describe findings about profitable possibilities of Free Software and will convince the mayor with arguments. However, it quickly became clear to members that the mayor is just the general manager of a very large authority and must rely on others to make his decisions.
