openDesk update: Open-source momentum in the public sector
openDesk six months on: growing demand, delivery progress and insights from public sector open source migration.
ZenDiS
Test the office and collaboration suite for public administration in Berlin for yourself.
On 11 June 2026, from 9 am to 7 pm, the Creative Bureaucracy Festival will bring together an international innovation community from the public sector, politics and civil society at the Festsaal Kreuzberg in Berlin. The event will explore new ideas and practical approaches for a sustainable public administration. In a series of sessions, international speakers will present innovative solutions for the public administration of the future. Together, we will rethink the principles, processes and practices of public institutions.
This year, ZenDiS will be present both on stage and, for the first time, with its own stand: at our demo station (Stand C6 | Magazinhalle), we will demonstrate how digital sovereignty can be implemented in practice using our solutions openCode and openDesk.
Pamela Krosta-Hartl (Managing Director, ZenDiS) | Venue: Garden Stage | Time: 10:20 am
For decades, open-source communities have been developing software collaboratively across organisational and national boundaries. In doing so, they have developed both shared code and shared practices, such as transparency as the norm, peer review, reuse and participation rather than duplication of effort. The keynote highlights what the public sector can learn from this tradition of collaboration. Although governments often talk about cooperation, digital projects are still too often developed in isolation, even when the underlying challenges are almost identical.
Using the ZenDiS platform openCode as an example, Pamela Krosta-Hartl demonstrates how public institutions can collaborate more closely, like open-source communities, by openly sharing and improving solutions and building digital public infrastructure collectively rather than on a department-by-department basis.
openDesk six months on: growing demand, delivery progress and insights from public sector open source migration.
ZenDiSWith its target of 160,000 licences across Germany’s public administration by the end of 2025, openDesk is proving its strength not only in major institutions such as the Robert Koch Institute, but also in smaller, strategically important settings.
Best practices