Open Source collaboration for the public sector

Digital collaboration in public administration is becoming increasingly important across Europe and beyond. Questions of data protection, interoperability, and digital sovereignty are now central to how governments organize their work.

In Germany, one initiative is setting a strong example: openDesk, an open source collaboration platform designed specifically for public institutions, developed by the Center for Digital Sovereignty of Public Administration (ZenDiS), a government-owned organization promoting open and secure IT infrastructures. openDesk integrates several trusted open source applications – including OpenProject for project management and task tracking – to enable secure, transparent, and independent collaboration within and between public organizations.

A milestone for openDesk: The German conference of Minister Presidents

A key milestone for openDesk was its successful use by the Conference of Minister Presidents (“Ministerpräsidentenkonferenz”, MPK). This conference brings together the heads of all 16 German federal states several times a year to coordinate policy decisions across the country.

At the October 2024 meeting in Leipzig, openDesk was used for the first time – only one week after the platform’s official launch. The organizing team from the State of Saxony wanted a secure, sovereign system for sharing documents, recording decisions, and collaborating on materials between all 16 states.

The result was a complete success. openDesk proved to be reliable, secure, and interoperable. The conference’s digital processes ran smoothly, and all participating offices could collaborate efficiently. This first real-world use case demonstrated that open source collaboration works even at the highest levels of government.

The technology behind openDesk

openDesk is a modular, fully open collaboration suite that combines several established open source solutions into one cohesive environment. It is developed and supported by a strong network of European and German partners who are committed to transparency, data protection, and digital sovereignty:

• B1 Systems GmbH – consulting and infrastructure services for open source deployments.
• Collabora Online – collaborative editing of office documents directly in the browser.
• Element Software GmbH – secure chat and video communication based on the Matrix protocol.
• Nextcloud GmbH – secure file storage, synchronization, and sharing.
• Nordeck IT + Consulting GmbH – software development and integration of open collaboration tools.
• OpenProject GmbH – project management, task planning, and transparent team collaboration.
• Open-Xchange GmbH – open e-mail and groupware infrastructure.
• STACKIT GmbH & Co. KG – cloud hosting infrastructure based in Germany.
• Univention GmbH – identity and access management for public IT systems.
• XWiki SAS – open knowledge management and documentation platform.

Together, these organizations deliver a sovereign, privacy-respecting digital workspace that meets the strict security and data protection standards of European public administrations.

Secure hosting within Germany

During the first deployment at the MPK in Saxony, openDesk was operated by Adfinis and hosted on the cloud infrastructure of IONOS, which is certified according to the C5 security standard of the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI).

The more recent MPK meeting under the chairmanship of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate was hosted by STACKIT, the cloud provider of the Schwarz Group (known for Lidl and Kaufland), with technical support from B1 Systems.

This collaboration between public institutions, mid-sized IT service providers, and open source software vendors shows how digital sovereignty is becoming a practical reality in Europe – secure, independent, and future-proof.

Growing momentum: The International Criminal Court joins the movement

Digital sovereignty is not just a German or European topic anymore. The idea of using open, transparent, and locally controlled software is gaining international traction.

Recently, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague announced its decision to replace Microsoft products with openDesk. This move by one of the world’s most important international justice institutions underlines a growing trend: organizations handling sensitive information are increasingly turning to open source solutions to ensure long-term independence and control over their data.

OpenProject as a key component of openDesk

As one of the core components of openDesk, OpenProject provides the backbone for structured project and task management. It enables transparency, accountability, and traceability of decisions – essential qualities for complex administrative environments.

OpenProject helps public sector teams coordinate their work effectively, stay aligned on responsibilities and timelines, and maintain full control over their data. Hosted on European infrastructure and fully open source, it meets the highest privacy and compliance standards.

Learn more about openDesk and the software providers behind it.

Looking ahead

By the end of 2025, openDesk aims to deploy around 160,000 licenses across German public institutions. The platform continues to expand – from large organizations like the Robert Koch Institute to smaller but strategically critical bodies such as the Conference of Minister Presidents.

openDesk and its components, including OpenProject, represent a shared vision: digital sovereignty as the new standard, not the exception.

OpenProject 16.6 has been released and this version introduces new features and improvements again. Please take a few minutes to learn what changes for you. We will summarize the most important changes in this blog article and, as always, please see our release notes that contain all changes, features and bug fixes.

• Project evaluation and scoring (Enterprise add-on)
• Significant performance improvements
• New index page for Documents module
• Further usability updates

Project evaluation and scoring (Enterprise add-on)

With OpenProject 16.6, project portfolio managers gain new ways to make their work more measurable and transparent. The release introduces three new project attribute types: Hierarchy, Weighted item lists, and Calculated value. They can be combined to evaluate and compare projects based on consistent criteria.

These attributes allow organizations to build their own evaluation models. Hierarchy project attributes let you organize information in a structured, nested way — for example, grouping initiatives by region, department, or program.

Weighted item lists extend this concept by assigning numeric scores to list options, such as effort levels or risk ratings. These values can then be used as input for automated calculations.

Calculated values enable automatic computations based on formulas using numeric project attributes, including scores from Weighted item lists or even other calculated values. The computed result is displayed directly on the project overview and in the project list. It automatically updates whenever one of its source attributes (e.g., Benefit or Effort in the example below) changes.

Here’s an example of a calculated value called ‘Overall score (calculated)’ with the following formula: (Strategic impact * 0.6) + ( Benefit * 0.3) - (Effort * 0.1)

These new attribute types open up flexible ways to work with project data. Scoring is just one typical example — the same structure can be used to represent strategic priorities, aggregate indicators, or define your own evaluation framework that fits your organization’s needs.

Note

Please note that these new project attributes are part of our Enterprise add-ons in the Enterprise Premium plan.

Significant performance improvements

Working with large projects and complex portfolios can be challenging when pages take too long to load or filters lag behind. That’s why OpenProject 16.6 focuses on improving performance, ensuring that even large-scale installations with thousands of projects and millions of work packages remain fast and reliable.

To achieve this, several backend processes have been improved. Database queries and API responses have been refined to avoid unnecessary counting operations, and the autocompleter for adding work package relations now only retrieves the data it actually needs. These changes reduce query load and make the application more efficient overall.

As a result, users will notice faster response times, smoother navigation, and more responsive filtering — even in the largest environments.

New index page for Documents module

Managing project documents efficiently is key to keeping everyone aligned. But as projects grow, finding the right file can become a challenge. To make this easier, OpenProject 16.6 introduces the first step toward a more powerful and collaborative Documents module.

The new index page provides a structured overview of all project documents, showing each file’s Name, Type (the category), and Last edited date. The most recently updated items are always on top. A quick filter helps you search by title, and the navigation menu on the left lets you narrow the list by Type (previously called Category). Both terms are used synonymously in this first step, as Type will gradually replace Category in future updates.

A new + Document button makes adding content straightforward, and on mobile devices, the view adapts to show only the most relevant details.

While this is a smaller change on its own, it marks the beginning of a broader improvement to how teams will work with documents in OpenProject. We are excited about the upcoming changes that will make document management and live collaboration easier and more intuitive.

See our roadmap for more information.

Further usability updates

Small usability enhancements can make a big difference in everyday work. OpenProject 16.6 brings several refinements that make managing information smoother, meetings more efficient, and administration tasks easier to navigate.

Change parent of a custom field item or project attribute (Enterprise add-on)

Administrators can now rearrange items within hierarchical custom fields (Enterprise add-on) or project attributes without having to recreate them. A new Change parent option opens a dialog showing the hierarchy tree, allowing quick reorganization through search and selection.

Updated “More” menu in meetings

In the Meetings module, moderators can now move agenda items directly between sections using the new Move to section action. This saves time in meetings with multiple sections or longer agendas and helps keep discussions better structured.

Learn more about meeting management with OpenProject.

Editing individual attributes even if other fields are invalid

Users can now edit visible fields even if other required fields are missing or invalid. This prevents unnecessary validation errors — for example, when a required field was added later — and lets users continue their work without interruption.

Sticky header and first column in workflows

In Administration → Work packages → Workflow, the table now has a sticky header and sticky first column. This makes it easier for administrators to keep an overview of transitions when scrolling through large workflow tables.

Read more about managing work package workflows in OpenProject.

Mini calendar re-added on mobile

On mobile devices, the date picker once again includes a mini calendar view for selecting start and finish dates. This makes it easier to see weekdays and working days at a glance, improving usability when managing tasks on the go.

OpenProject 16.6: Migration, installation, updates and support

Follow the upgrade guide for the packaged installation or Docker installation to update your OpenProject installation to OpenProject 16.6. We update your hosted OpenProject environments (Enterprise cloud) today, November 5, 2025.

You will find more information about all new features and changes in our Release notes or in the OpenProject Documentation.

If you need support, you can post your questions in the Community Forum, or if you are eligible for Enterprise support, please contact us and we are happy to support you personally.

• New to OpenProject? To test all features of OpenProject 16.6 right away, create a 14 days free trial instance for our OpenProject Enterprise cloud.
• Prefer to run OpenProject 16.6 in your own infrastructure? Here you can find the Installation guidelines for OpenProject.
• Want to upgrade from a Community version to try out the Enterprise add-ons? Get a 14 days free trial token to test the Enterprise add-ons (all plans).

Credits

A very special thank you goes to Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, City of Cologne, Deutsche Bahn and ZenDiS for sponsoring released or upcoming features. Your support, alongside the efforts of our amazing Community, helps drive these innovations. Also a big thanks to our Community members for reporting bugs and helping us identify and provide fixes. Special thanks for reporting and finding bugs go to Sven Kunze, Stefan Weiberg, Gábor Alexovics, Alexander Aleschenko, and Tobias Nowakow.

This release, we specifically want to thank Emon for reporting a security vulnerability on our website. Reports and feedback like this are one of the reasons we love OSS and appreciate being part of such an amazing community.

Last but not least, we are very grateful for our very engaged translation contributors on Crowdin, who translated quite a few OpenProject strings! This release we would like to particularly thank the following users:

• William, for a great number of translations into Chinese Traditional.
• Pickart, for a great number of translations into Catalan.
• Maxime77, for a great number of translations into French. Would you like to help out with translations yourself? Then take a look at our translation guide and find out exactly how you can contribute. It is very much appreciated!

As always, we welcome any feedback on this release. 💙