The Gaia-X foundation is solid

Recent news on the lack of funding for five more German Gaia-X projects has contributed to public uncertainty about the future of the pan-European Gaia-X project.

Gaia-X Federation Services (GXFS) and Sovereign Cloud Stack (SCS) are the fundamental projects for building the Gaia-X infrastructure and both projects are not affected by the recent budget cuts, but continue with full energy. In addition to these two basic projects, additional projects were earmarked that are intended to apply the recently developed infrastructure and data ecosystems and create concrete benefits for the business sector and the public sector.

In a funding competition, 16 projects were selected from very many submissions. As far as we know, the first 11 are not affected by the budget cuts, but the other 5 are. In all these projects Gaia-X is intended to become usable and visible in very concrete application scenarios. For 5 of the selected projects this will not happen now, which is very regrettable. From our point of view, however, this does not call Gaia-X into question and the mission to achieve true digital sovereignty is not abandoned.

We also regret the lack of funding for the Sovereign Tech Fund and for the German Zentrum für Digitale Souveränität, which are important contributions to strengthen open source and its use in public administration and thus to advance digital sovereignty in a very practical way. Both initiatives have already been researched and prepared and were waiting to get kicked off.

Kurt Garloff, Co-Leader / CTO Sovereign Cloud Stack, Open Source Business Alliance – Bundesverband für digitale Souveränität e.V.

Unfortunately, the overall impression is that the positive statements on digitalisation and the strategy regarding digital sovereignty are insufficiently followed by deeds. The consequences are unfortunately bitter: some of the tender plants that appear suitable for advancing digitalisation in public administration and shaping this in a sovereign manner with the help of open source approaches would thus unfortunately wither before they could grow. This is neither good for digitalisation nor for sovereignty.

The Open Source Business Alliance - Bundesverband für digitale Souveränität e.V. has also published an open letter on this.