Abstract

Europe has bold ambitions for open source and digital sovereignty, yet most initiatives struggle to deliver meaningful change where it matters: at the level of local institutions. Despite strong strategies and political commitments, implementation stalls because the policy frameworks guiding European digital transformation ignore a simple truth. Europe is built on a multi-level governance system where local actors carry the responsibility for execution but lack the incentives, support, and capacity to act.

Drawing on hands-on experience from Denmark’s OS2 (os2.eu) community, where more than 85% of municipalities jointly develop and maintain open source solutions, this talk examines why current EU-level open source policy risks failing in practice. It unpacks three systemic barriers:

1. Weak incentives at local level: Municipalities lack resources, competencies, and organisational maturity to prioritise open source adoption. Financial savings are not an effective incentive, because open source is not a budget trick; it requires long-term investment in capacity.
2. Multi-level governance creates structural friction: Authority is distributed across EU, national, and local levels. While this strengthens democracy, it fragments responsibility. National governments centralise; local authorities implement without adequate support; and EU ambitions rarely translate into actionable change.
3. Vendor dominance distorts procurement and advice: Large IT vendors shape decision-making, reinforce proprietary dependency, and overshadow sovereign alternatives. The barriers are governance- and leadership-related, not technical.

The talk ends with practical policy recommendations: risk-bearing EU capital for local transitions, stronger alignment between EU-level commitments and local implementation realities, and a cultural shift where every new digital project must explicitly break with “doing things the way we always have”.

Speaker bio

Rasmus Frey is Chief Executive and Secretary at OS2 (os2.eu), Denmark’s open-source community for public digital collaboration.

He works at the intersection of governance, innovation, and technology, helping municipalities and public institutions co-develop and reuse digital solutions through open collaboration and shared ownership.

Rasmus contributes to European networks on open-source governance and digital sovereignty, with a focus on institutional design and democratic digital infrastructure.