Digital sovereignty doesn't come for free

Organizing a dedicated conference day for the public sector is a bit of a gamble. It only works if people from government agencies are willing to speak openly about their problems—and not just their successes. The answer came on September 28, 2026, in Rotterdam. One day before the official start of DrupalCon Europe, representatives from municipalities, ministries, and the European Commission gathered for the first Government Summit. What was discussed there affects every Austrian municipality that operates a website: Who is actually responsible for the software on which the public sector is increasingly relying?

Why an Agency Handles Networking

At ACOLONO, networking has always been important to us. Our founders, Nico Grienauer and Chris Ziegler, are both active members of the Drupal Austria association. Nico also helped organize the summit in Rotterdam, and for good reason. The panel included representatives from other agencies—that is, companies that compete for the very same projects on a daily basis. This isn’t a contradiction; it’s at the heart of our understanding of open source. Software that’s used by many must also be supported by many. No single agency and no single community can continue to develop, secure, and maintain a platform’s accessibility on its own for decades. Anyone who tries to do so will sooner or later end up back in the very dependency that open source is actually meant to avoid—only with a different name on the bill.

For us, networking is therefore not a byproduct of marketing, but an integral part of our work. We’re learning from colleagues in the United Kingdom who, through LocalGov Drupal, have been demonstrating for years how municipalities can collectively own software. And we’re working to bring these experiences to Austria—without pretending that a British model can be applied one-to-one.

Utility alone does not lead to sovereignty

Dr. Sachiko Muto, chair of OpenForum Europe and a researcher at the Swedish institute RISE, set the agenda for the Government Summit. She moderated the morning panel on the question of who is responsible for maintaining the open-source ecosystems on which digital sovereignty depends. Her argument: The public sector does not achieve sovereignty through the passive consumption of open-source software, but rather through active participation in its development. To achieve this, legal and structural barriers must be removed, and procurement processes must be designed in such a way that code and feedback flow back into the projects.

Teun van der Vorm, Director General of DICTU—the IT service provider for the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs—described how this works in practice. There, open source is preferred whenever possible, and in-house code is published according to the “Public Money, Public Code” principle. His reasoning is noteworthy: in addition to independence and transparency, he also cites the job market. IT professionals who consciously choose to work for the public sector often want to work exactly that way.

Gina Plat from the Open Source Program Office of the Dutch Ministry of the Interior had recommended a very pragmatic first step in a previous interview: a dependency map. For each key service, the analysis clarifies who provides it, what would happen if prices doubled or the provider withdrew, and what the cost of phasing out the service would be. At the same time, she cautioned against promoting open source as a cost-cutting measure. While license fees are eliminated, this requires in-house expertise, ongoing operation, and contributions to the projects being used.

She cited Schleswig-Holstein as an example: According to Plat, the state made a one-time investment of about nine million euros in the transition and has since saved approximately 15 million euros annually in licensing fees. However, she emphasized that what matters most is not the savings, but the regained control—and the fact that the transition was supported politically at the very highest levels.

Accessibility comes at a cost

Mike Gifford of the U. S. Agency CivicActions drew attention to an issue that often doesn’t come up until the very end of procurement processes. About a quarter of the population lives with a disability. Accessibility is therefore not an added feature for public services, but a basic requirement. Nevertheless, it is frequently underfunded in open-source projects, as shown by Gifford’s automated comparison of European government websites.

His key point: The same accessibility issue should not be fixed fifty times using public funds—but rather once, directly within the shared software. For that to happen, it must be specified in the contract. Gifford identifies six building blocks: clear requirements, a defined testing procedure, the involvement of people with disabilities, accessibility as an acceptance criterion, retesting after major changes, and a mandatory process for contributing improvements back to the open-source project. He points to the Netherlands as a model, where the “Open Source Ambitieladder” guides government agencies step by step from publishing their code to open collaboration. For those looking for specific wording, Gifford also provides templates for contract clauses.

In Austria, where the Web Accessibility Act already requires public agencies to comply, this is an obvious lever to use.

Building Together—With All Our Strengths and Weaknesses

The case studies demonstrated what is possible when local governments share software. In the United Kingdom and Ireland, LocalGov Drupal has grown from two municipalities sharing a common codebase to approximately 77 municipalities. They jointly fund and develop their platform through a cooperative that they own. Building on this model, the City of Luton has rebuilt its website, which now features approximately 2,000 pages and nearly 4,000 documents. The public beta went live after eleven weeks, and the full site launched about 14 weeks later. More interesting than the speed is Luton’s own assessment: while the choice of platform is important, it is clear lines of responsibility and high-quality content that ultimately determine the experience for citizens. Thus, shared software does not replace in-house work.

The British agency Chicken’s cost estimate for “Quorum,” an open-source system for managing local council meetings, was similarly transparent. According to a rough estimate, building it collaboratively costs about 80,000 pounds, while proprietary solutions in the UK run between 15,000 and 40,000 pounds per year per municipality. For a single municipality, this isn’t immediately cost-effective—the model only becomes economically viable when several municipalities share the costs. An initial alpha version has been available on drupal.org since September.

The Flemish employment agency VDAB also reported how it was able to avoid purchasing a new location-tracking tool because its existing Drupal intranet had long been managing the necessary data. Sometimes the most cost-effective solution is already in-house. Other short presentations also covered topics beyond Drupal—such as OpenWeight language models and Nextcloud, or how to efficiently manage a large number of microsites.

Who maintains the digital commons?

Economist Garrett Hardin described what is known as the “tragedy of the commons”: shared resources are depleted when everyone uses them and no one is held accountable for them. Open source is often cited as a counterexample because software is not consumed through use. That’s true—but only as long as someone invests in maintenance, security, and further development. And it was precisely this tension that was the focus of the afternoon panel moderated by Bert Boerland, chair of the Dutch Drupal Association. The key question: Are municipal budgets, procurement rules, and political cycles designed to sustain something that outlasts a single contract or legislative term? After all, a municipal website is not a campaign site. It runs for many years, must serve people with low literacy skills just as reliably as it does experts, and must take public procurement law, accessibility, and data management into account from the very beginning.

There is movement on this front, particularly from Brussels. On September 9, 2026, the European Commission presented a proposal for a new public procurement regulation. It is intended to replace the three procurement directives from 2014, apply directly in all member states, and, for the first time, establish a framework for a European preference in public procurement. Nothing has been decided yet; the Parliament and the Council are still negotiating. However, a public consultation is underway until mid-November—an opportunity to have a say in how maintenance, accessibility, and open-source software will be incorporated into future calls for bids.

For Austria, this question is particularly intriguing—and more challenging than the success stories from the UK might suggest. With around 2,100 municipalities, many of them very small, the starting point is quite different. The market for municipal websites is concentrated among a few providers, and small municipalities have little capacity to manage their own digital projects. It also remains unclear who in this country will provide the seed funding that a joint project needs in its initial phase. In Germany, for example, the government-run Sovereign Tech Agency specifically supports the maintenance of open-source software. Whether Austria needs a comparable instrument is one of the questions we should be discussing.

That is precisely why we believe this exchange is essential. If we can see how other countries have addressed financing, governance, and procurement—and where they have failed—we don’t have to make every mistake ourselves.

What's Next: Vienna and Brussels

In 2026, we’ll be bringing the conversation from Rotterdam to Austria. On November 20, 2026, we’ll be hosting LocalGov Day in Vienna. The focus will be on how municipalities and cities can maintain control over their data and digital services. We’ll also be introducing LocalGov Drupal Austria there—and having an open discussion about what aspects of the British model can be adapted and which cannot. For more information, visit www. localgov.day.

You should also mark the next big event on your calendar right away: the Drupal4Gov EU Conference 2027 on Thursday, January 28, 2027, in Brussels. It’s part of EU Open Source Week and brings together government agencies, EU institutions, and the open-source community for a day of discussions on AI in government, open-source strategy, the EU Sovereign Cloud, and digital public goods. Admission is free, and registration will open shortly at drupal4gov.eu. Drupal Austria and Nico Grienauer are once again supporting the conference by actively helping with the organization. Because—as mentioned earlier—networking simply adds value.