The ICC is moving to German-developed openDesk
Image:
The ICC in The Hague
The International Criminal Court has joined other European bodies in dropping Microsoft Office in favour of a local open-source alternative.
Germany’s Handelsblatt was first to cover the news, and the ICC has since confirmed that it is moving its internal work environment from Microsoft Office to openDesk, an open source software suite designed for the public sector.
Promising “a focus on digital sovereignty,” openDesk provides tools like calendar, asynchronous chat, video calls, identity & access management and file management. It uses …
The ICC is moving to German-developed openDesk
Image:
The ICC in The Hague
The International Criminal Court has joined other European bodies in dropping Microsoft Office in favour of a local open-source alternative.
Germany’s Handelsblatt was first to cover the news, and the ICC has since confirmed that it is moving its internal work environment from Microsoft Office to openDesk, an open source software suite designed for the public sector.
Promising “a focus on digital sovereignty,” openDesk provides tools like calendar, asynchronous chat, video calls, identity & access management and file management. It uses components from eight different European software providers as a central element.
Originally built out of the German Federal Ministry of the Interior’s Sovereign Workplace initiative, The Centre for Digital Sovereignty took over openDesk’s development in January last year.
Although the ICC is a relatively small Microsoft customer, with under 2,000 workstations, its move signals that technology is now truly part of the geopolitical conversation.
The organisation’s switch away from Office echoes similar moves by Denmark’s Agency for Digital Government and the German state of Schleswig-Holstein in June, although they invested more in Libre Office. Denmark specifically pointed to political tensions with the US government as push factors behind the move.
The same may apply to the ICC. President Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked the institution, and sanctioned many of its staff, including its chief prosecutor, earlier this year.
There have been repeated warnings since Trump returned to power, and Big Tech began kowtowing to him, that Europe’s digital sovereignty is at risk. The continent lacks tech giants that can compete with the likes of Amazon, Microsoft, Alibaba and Tencent.
While US companies claim their offerings comply with local laws, they remain subject to the US Cloud Act, which obliges them to share data they hold – even abroad – with the US government on request. So far, tech companies’ claims of protecting sovereignty against this have not been tested in court.