Your company was involved in the development of the BayernBox. What was the basic idea behind this project?
Dyroff: The idea behind BayernBox is to provide all local authorities in Bavaria with a central platform for data exchange and to accelerate the digitalization process in local administration. When we talk about local administration in Bavaria, we are talking about 2,000 individual bodies. These include small communities, municipalities , districts, associations and large districts.
They all face the challenge of digitizing their systems and processes at affordable costs while meeting high security and data protection requirements. One can probably well imagine that great synergy effects are possible with such a transformation.
Accordingly, implementation quickly picked up speed after we started with the first municipalities in 2019.
The fact that we have now broken the 1,000 mark naturally spurs us on to further develop the BayernBox. In addition to the web client, the desktop client was also recently rolled out, offering users even more convenience. And the range of functions is constantly being expanded.
The BayernBox is based on ownCloud open-source technology. Why open source?
Dyroff: Open source generally stands for the highest level of digital sovereignty and is therefore exactly the direction in which the digitalization of the public sector is developing. This is reflected in the federal government ‘s coalition agreement as well as in the first eGovernment laws at the federal state level.
In a few years, the majority of public procurement procedures will require the use of open-source software. The reason is simple: open source stands for the highest level of transparency, which fully enables security and data protection. And these two values are of central importance, especially when it comes to public services.
Holger Dyroff, COO and Co-Founder, ownCloud
Is the BayernBox also a successful example of a sovereign solution that does not require hyperscalers?
Dyroff: Absolutely. I will just say this briefly and succinctly: In Germany we are not dependent on hyperscalers . This is especially true if data protection and data security really have to play a role. I am convinced that the Bavarian state government has taken the right path with BayernBox. It corresponds to the spirit of the Bavarian Digital Act, which has legally anchored open source as a new standard in procurement.
And the BayernBox has also met with a great response from Bavarian municipalities, as we were clearly told in discussions. For many employees, it is a central tool in everyday work for storing and sharing large amounts of data, for example not only documents but also videos, or simply collaborating with colleagues. Of course we are proud that we were able to create this opportunity.
Are there ambitions to further develop the project or expand it to other federal states?
Dyroff: In principle, it is the task of the individual federal states to decide on the implementation of such IT projects. We have no influence on that. Of course, as ownCloud we would welcome discussions with other federal states. I think that, in addition to the technical skills, we have a lot of know-how about the requirements that municipal IT has to cope with. We look forward to further collaboration with the Bavarian State Government and are always open to further developing the project and integrating new functionalities.
The original interview was published in German in eGovernment magazine on 29th November 2023.