The International Criminal Court (ICC) is one of many governing bodies that is switching away from proprietary office and collaboration suites in favour of open source solutions. The decision was first reported by the Handelsblatt on 30 October, and was subsequently confirmed by a spokesperson of the ICC.
The ICC is the only permanent international criminal court. It enforces the Rome Statute, thus presiding over genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes of aggression.
The argument for open source
The ICC’s switch to openDesk is mirroring many EU countries’ ambitions to opt for open, sovereign digital infrastructure. openDesk itself grew out of the sovereign workplace initiative started by the German Ministry of Interior, which was taken over by the Centre for Digital Sovereignty (Zentrum für Digitale Souveränität der Öffentlichen Verwaltung, ZenDiS) in January 2024. Officially launched in October 2024, the workplace solution is a modular, all-in-one office suite.
Beyond public administration, ZenDiS also offers an enterprise version of openDesk, delivered as a Software-as-a-Service solution hosted by a German provider or on-premise in the customer’s data centre. In its first year, openDesk was adopted by public administrations and enterprises, with enterprise contracts for 160,000 active users, including the Robert Koch Institute.
Through its open source underpinnings, openDesk addresses a key concern of the EU: the challenge of critical dependency in IT. It provides a transparent, customisable and independent software solution to customers, thus ensuring flexibility with the changing needs of public administrations and a high level of security.
The case of the ICC shows the broad variety of actors affected by infrastructural dependency and confronts public administrations with the potential consequences of this. Thus, switching to open source solutions is not only a matter of convenience, but also supports the autonomy and independence of public interest-driven organisations.
