Thanks again for joining us.
The next poll will be the 100-day turn-hours advancing European sovereign IT together
with Alexander.
Thank you.
Thanks everybody for joining.
I think it's a topic which we will have at first and now throughout many different
deaf rooms and we always have a different perspective.
It's never the same talk.
It's always something like the topic is or the titles are similar but the outcomes
are always very different.
I think it's really important to everybody to get to know what we are doing actually
to have or to share some history with all of you guys.
And this is the most text that you will ever get from me but it's important to have
it condensed.
I think it's really important that a few years ago sovereignty wasn't a sexy topic back then.
It was something that people started to think about but there was no really exterior vision
or some sort of group which was working all together.
And in 2019 the federal government and Germany decided that they need to have some sort
of a market analysis on how dependent actually their infrastructure would be.
And they figured out that for example I think 95% obviously of all computers have been
using Microsoft tools.
From that there was a yearly race which began in 2020 the different councils which we have
for IT and digital decisions within the government decided that we need some sort of
key principle.
And then the following year also a strategy to found basically Tendis Tendis is a
fully federal yet private company which is owned by the state and Tendis is basically
an typical German bureaucratic abbreviation for a center for digital sovereignty.
Back in 2023 the federal government decided that we should start, we should start funding
actually an initiative back then which was working on tool which was a certain workspace.
And then in 2024 actually when the people at Tendis started operating and also the
colleagues at Dnum the French counterpart also started working on things together.
We decided that we should launch at some point it should not only be a project but actually
product so that so that people understand that it's something serious and at the same time it was
also roughly I think spring of 2024 when France and Germany decided that we should create
the 100-day challenges and we will come to the idea and everything in a second.
Fast forward to last year Netherlands joined us as a third country and now there are even more
countries who are joining us. Just a brief one we had in Vilanst talk we had open desk as a
mention at least but who in this room knows what open desk is? Cool that's really cool.
For those who don't know it yet it's a workspace solution which we are building with the focus of federal
governments. It's really important to understand that it's something that is being conducted by
Tendis but it's actually a big European community standing right behind it. We have open
exchange we have Nordic we have element we have open project which we just heard callaboga
XWiki next cloud you mentioned and then we have also hosting provider and a service provider behind
that and I think on that note and also seeing the partners some of them who are here as well.
Thanks for that and also thanks to Klimo for organizing this demo maybe a brick.
So we love everybody but it's really important and I think it's key that we also have a federal
ministry for digital transformation right now and state modernization which is supporting Tendis
and also that course. So in 2024 we had last week and we had opened desk to switch which
were about to launch and then we met and we thought that there was like on a political level
people were working on I think two and a half years on the document and then it was signed and then
we said okay let's start working actually together and we figured that we need to have
some sort of a framework in which we work and I think it was like past lunch break or so we said
we need some sort of a fancy title and we decided on working on 100 day challenges.
Up until today nobody really knows who's investing just 100 days whether it's in total,
whether it's whether it's it's country but but we are figuring that out right now it's
maybe we will do a challenge on that as well.
But the idea is to have some sort of a not that bureaucratic but the framework in which we can actually
work together to have some sort of an approval from different governmental bodies to
invest into standards and to develop joint IT solutions. I think it's really important to understand that
for example a federal government it's open source is a complete movement like it's a it's some sort
of a financial nightmare also because you you can't invest into something that is being used
by federal states for example in Germany if you are the federal government and yet open
source is available to everybody and then you have to figure out how to explain to people
that that is actually still legal to do that and now we come to the question in regards to
how to invest in joint projects across borders and that's something that's really
interesting. 100 days challenges which we do have different topics obviously there is AI
we work also on standards not only in regards to what 100 day challenge would be but also on how
we want to work together for example if even if there are two organizations you will still have
just one repository somewhere who owns it what's the community like stuff like that and
from there on when in last year we had the Netherlands joining us we we started to
understand that there were not only technical questions but also sometimes differences or
there's a hard topic in regards to how actually for example three countries can work together
you imagine on like what would be like a big hurdle if you work in a triangle of different
nations like language what else working culture put your mind thanks once again
three people in charge oh if it would be only three I would be really happy
just playing different goals different goals yes processes okay you are all correct yet
the biggest hurdle that we had on providing a trilateral contract was actually the paper and
the folders because every country has a separate set of paper like a type of paper on which you have
to sign documents and also the question of the seal is really difficult and apparently
Germany even has many different seals so that was that was interesting but at the same
time it's really interesting to see that actually everything that you guys said was true
I think it's really interesting to see different organizations even public organizations
working with different languages or finding a common language and also the common understanding
and definition of terms for example I don't know who of you is coming from France
cool anyone from the Netherlands cool anyone from Germany and guess what all three nations
have a different definition of what sovereignty is because of history but also of current political
issues I think it's really important that all these differences that we have actually
because we do have a similar goal in which we are all thriving or trying to reach out
and we have a set in regards to how we want to work together and we have and that's
what I really like we have some sort of teams in which people do not really feel or identify
themselves as we are the German part we are the Dutch part we are the French part but they all work
together on the same goal and that's really important to create and to facilitate such
such an environment basically which is usually something where you would see maybe
rivalries or something similar to that.
We did have and we are still continuing on having certain success stories one of them being
docs at two which was on hack and use for a while on number one but we created
or we continued further development on that and also integrated that into our sweet
and we are funding block notes library which is really cool not only to provide
basically further development when it comes to tools but also to libraries I think it's
super important to see how you can reuse the same libraries it's saving costs but
it's also saving or it's improving user experience if you have different tools or
components which are using the same framework right behind it.
Mine below which is the Dutch version of the combination of last written open desk
is also a success story which is really cool for all of us because we are not only
talking about open source but we can actually see how if you want to combine things or
interchange open source sweets how it's actually being conducted and how you can improve
that.
Maybe an outlook on what the teams are working on right now.
We have René from our team who is also in charge of organizing right now the different
challenges which are on this slide all of us are working on on maybe an early stage
of an operating system, a joint operating system and we are working on a showcase in this
year.
I think it's really cool to see global search as a topic which is really difficult if you
have different applications and different search components how you can actually interact
and combine them all together in a joint search bar.
It's really important still, that's what I meant.
We need to document on how we work together and we need to figure out this year we said
like two years is enough and we should figure out what 100 day challenge actually is.
And what we also working on is removing forks which we also did right now because of
basically the speed which we were at in regards to integration of tools in between
each other and that's what we want to do with the force challenge.
I think it's really important to say thanks to the different teams.
That wasn't part of their job description to work in international projects but also a big
thank you to actually to older decision makers and there are more than three who are supporting
us in regards to actually having that sort of a corporation.
It's usually whenever nations are cooperating it's very text heavy and you don't see results
that fast.
In our case we got the approval so to say to have results before the paperwork is done
and that's something that is very unusual.
I think it's super important that we keep that kind of spirit right now.
We also got support by the European Commission to establish some sort of a structure
underlying these challenges and to have also some sort of a legal body to actually work together
because once there is code there is also certain dependencies if a government is using them
and we want to ensure that there is not really like some sort of government change or so
which can be in the way that we have and it's really interesting like one last anecdote
maybe we always thought about sovereignty in regards to when we started with that from a German perspective
that we need to think about what kind of contingency there would be and then we had France as a partner
we thought that's maybe something stable to have that and then the Dutch government also joined us
and maybe if you re-vind or so the last 18 months or so all three governments had government changes within six months
and that shows but the project is still continuing and it's really important to see that you need partners
and you need to have some sort of stability to also provide from a public perspective and ecosystem
and to continue to work on certain topics.
If you want to know more about some of the tools but also some of the components which we have we also have a deafening which is happening right now
the colleagues from France will explain a different side of the story like the playbook of it in 15 minutes
so if you want to go run otherwise you can also visit all the websites of the tools and I'm here for a few more questions
thanks
Okay so the question is what's the difference between open desk and last week
I would say we have like an overlap of maybe 65% or so of all the components but we have a completely different approach
whereas last week is building and supporting tools by themselves
we rely on the different partners that we have within the network
and everything that we are requesting or supporting is always going into the upstream components of the products
yes
Open OS versus UOS
Why do you just exist already?
The question is open OS versus UOS
Open desk is also a bunch or a bundle of different products
We still keep their names. We are looking into UOS you can see or I think he was just right now in our deafroom
UOS is something that we are definitely looking into it's a community-based project
Yet at the same time we are looking into the idea of UOS at the same time we see certain hurdles in regards to the choice of the underlying operating system
So technical differences?
Yep but also the country
Nudo
The question is so this organization looks a lot like an innovation lab
a place where a lot of innovation can happen
two questions for that one is
isn't there how can actually other open source communities participate to that innovation lab
which I think could also help make use of it
but this thing companies instead of trying to reinvent things sometimes
maybe make use of things that already exists
that other people are already working on
because there is innovation all around UOS
The second question is
isn't there also a risk that it creates a lot of innovation
and doesn't focus on maintenance of a lot of components
and that there is a risk of creating creating and creating too much versus
the need for maintenance of professional solution
What should you take on that?
So two questions one is how can I try to paraphrase it?
How can the community participate in the 100-day challenges?
What's the first one let me try to answer on that?
We have or last December so two months ago a European consortium on digital goods
or digital comments was founded
and which the community will be also taking a big part in supporting
and maintaining and also being funded by that
that's something that is being ramped up right now as we speak
that's one thing the other one in regards to building versus maintaining products
I think it's really interesting right now for us to see
that if there are many or if there are different teams joining us
how can we keep the creation level so to say maybe at the same pace
but divert it into different teams so that people do not lose focus on providing
a good tool which needs to be maintained at the same time
There was a hand
which you had spawned on different issues of sovereignty
and maybe especially
well
So the question is the differences of sovereignty
I'm not I think this is not the building for political sciences
but there is one right next door
but if you have some spare time just
have a look at the definitions of autonomy and sovereignty in the different countries
maybe that's a hint for an AI or so
Both of these questions may be more funding
but different general impact
why is the status of New York and New York
because we know that New York and New York is severely used
in Microsoft based products so
how they support you or is there a new way
that is going to make sense but they should view
So the question is how the European Union is playing a role in that
the European consortium on digital comments
is I think the answer of the European Union in that regard
is going to be funded and supported by the European Union
as well as the countries who are participating in that
and I think the European Union is taking a good role of a facilitator
and I think the European Union is going to be funded