According to the German government, there are “some areas of technology in which Germany is dependent on individual foreign providers”. This applies to cloud infrastructure, operating systems and network technology, for example, writes the Digital Ministry in charge in a recently published answer to a question from the AfD parliamentary group in the Bundestag. The executive wants to “reduce this dependency and give European companies the opportunity to position themselves more strongly in the competition for secure and high-performance infrastructures”.
According to the notification, the government is also aware that some US companies have high market shares as hyperscalers on the German and European market for cloud solutions. This would also result in dependencies on these providers. As long as they remain one-sided, these “entail risks”. The executive therefore sees it as its task to address and avoid these risks.
However, the government departments themselves are avid users of cloud services from Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft in particular, as can be seen from an earlier response from the executive to a question from the Left Party. Even sensitive areas such as the Federal Police, which reports to the Ministry of the Interior, are represented here. In addition, the Procurement Office recently concluded four framework agreements with hyperscalers, from which government agencies can now obtain cloud services from Amazon, Google and Microsoft in a simplified manner.
New framework agreements with hyperscalers
The security of the data stored in the computer clouds is not always a given with the US companies mentioned. This is because they are obliged by the Cloud Act to make customer information that is also processed abroad available to the US security authorities on request. A court order is not required for this. According to the government, it has no knowledge of whether data from German companies stored on hyperscalers in this country has been passed on to US police authorities or intelligence agencies under the Cloud Act.
Despite the new framework agreements, the government emphasizes: “Strengthening the digital sovereignty of Germany and Europe, especially in the area of digital infrastructure, is a core concern of the coalition agreement and the federal government.” The black-red alliance has set itself the following goal: “Our digital policy is geared towards sovereignty.” This is about “power politics”. What is needed is a “digitally sovereign Germany”. Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Digital Minister Karsten Wildberger (both CDU) repeatedly emphasized this aspect.
OpenDesk and OpenCode as flagship projects
According to the response, several measures, projects and investments are planned or have already been commissioned for the 2025 financial year that are “suitable for strengthening digital sovereignty”. Specifically, the Ministry of Digital Affairs refers to the further development and establishment of the cloud-based solution OpenDesk. It is considered an alternative to the Microsoft 365 office package, the basic operation of the OpenCode platform and a feasibility study on the integration of the German Administration Cloud into this portal for the exchange of open source software.
In the area of responsibility of the Ministry of Research, investments were made as part of the AI service centers, the AI Factories initiative and the expansion of high-performance and supercomputing, the government continues. Funds for future investments by the department will be determined as part of the ongoing budget preparation process. The Ministry of Economic Affairs is also preparing a “project of common European interest” for edge computing infrastructure (IPCEI-ECI), for which funds are to be made available from the special infrastructure and climate protection fund in the current budget process. Funding will also be continued as part of the IPCEI-Cloud. Its aim is to develop software solutions for cloud infrastructures and make them largely available as open source.
The Open Source Business Alliance (OSBA) and other German stakeholders have long been calling for urgent alternatives to foreign IT services and infrastructures“that we can control and shape”. They believe the German government has a duty to work hard on this. As early as 2019, auditors referred to “pain points in the federal administration” due to dependencies on Microsoft products in a study for the Ministry of the Interior.
(nie)
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This article was originally published in
It was translated with technical assistance and editorially reviewed before publication.
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