OSS in strategic planning documents¶
About this policy
High-level government strategies and digital agendas often embed open-source principles to guide public sector modernization, digital sovereignty, and innovation. These policies signal long-term commitment to OSS by including it in official planning and governance frameworks.
What we include
This section highlights national digital strategies, multi-year plans, executive decrees, and other strategic documents where open-source software is recognized as a key component of public digital transformation—either through explicit targets, mandates, or programmatic commitments.
🌍 Policies¶
🇧🇷 Brazil¶
- 🔗 Decree Nº 10.332/2020
- 📄 Overview:
Decree Nº 10.332/2020, which established Brazil's Digital Government Strategy (2020–2022), references open-source software in its strategic planning by promoting the use of systems and applications built on open and interoperable code. This appears in Initiative 12.7, under Objective 12, which aims to enhance the adoption of digital signatures and identity solutions. The inclusion of open-source principles within this strategic initiative signals the government's intent to increase transparency, accessibility, and trust in its digital infrastructure.
🇪🇨 Ecuador¶
- 🔗 Executive Decree No. 1425 – Regulation for Software Procurement by Public Sector Entities
- 📄 Overview:
Executive Decree No. 1425 incorporates open-source software into Ecuador’s strategic digital planning by establishing a structured procurement framework that prioritizes open-source solutions. Article 10 mandates that public institutions prepare and submit migration feasibility plans to free digital technologies when acquiring proprietary software, positioning OSS adoption as a long-term strategic objective. This requirement embeds OSS considerations into institutional planning and aligns public procurement with national digital sovereignty goals.
🇪🇪 Estonia¶
- 🔗 Estonia’s Digital Agenda 2030
- 📄 Overview:
The "Estonia’s Digital Agenda 2030" strategically incorporates open-source software as a pillar of its digital transformation and vision for open innovation. This is most explicitly detailed under Sub-objective I, "Digital government," where a key result is the public release of state-owned software. The agenda specifies that software developed for the digital government using taxpayer funds and public sector intellectual property will be published under an open source license, provided it does not compromise national security. This core policy, located in the section on "Open innovation and development of govtech community," is supported by planned activities such as establishing a central code repository to promote the reuse of digital solutions.
🇫🇷 France¶
- 🔗 Circular No. 6264/SG
- 📄 Overview:
This high-level strategic directive, issued by the Prime Minister of France, establishes open source as a key enabler of state modernization. It outlines a national vision for the management and reuse of public data, algorithms, and source code, encouraging their openness to benefit users, researchers, and innovators. Open source is framed as a foundational element of digital transformation across public administration.
🇩🇪 Germany¶
- 🔗 Digital Strategy
- 📄 Overview:
Germany's Digital Strategy repeatedly identifies open source as a cornerstone of its plan for digital transformation. In the introductory overview (Section 1) and the section on public administration (Section 4.3), the consistent promotion and use of open-source approaches are presented as fundamental to achieving national digital sovereignty. The strategy also grounds major initiatives in open source, such as the Gaia-X data ecosystem described in Section 4.2, which is explicitly based on open-source applications and interoperable standards to foster an open and innovative digital market.
🇮🇹 Italy¶
- 🔗 Three-Year Plan for Information Technology in Public Administration 2024-2026
- 📄 Overview:
This strategic plan enshrines open source as a cornerstone of Italy's public sector digital transformation through its guiding principle of "apertura come prima opzione" (openness as the first option). This principle mandates that public administrations prioritize the use of open-source software to prevent vendor lock-in and promote the sharing of technological best practices. The plan operationalizes this strategy in Chapter 3 (RA3.2.1) by setting specific, measurable targets for the release and reuse of OSS, aiming for at least 150 administrations to publish their software and 3,000 entities to reuse solutions from the Developers Italia catalog by 2026.
🇰🇷 South Korea¶
- 🔗 Software Promotion Act
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📄 Overview:
The Software Promotion Act integrates open-source software (OSS) into national strategic planning through its master and implementation plans mandated under Article 5. These plans must promote OSS adoption in R\&D projects, ensure the public release of software developed with government support (Article 25), and encourage a culture of openness, sharing, and collaboration (Article 36). This positioning of OSS within high-level policy instruments demonstrates South Korea’s strategic commitment to using open source as a driver of digital innovation and industrial competitiveness.
- 📄 Overview:
Korea’s 2023 Software Promotion Strategy, adopted as a national basic plan under the Software Promotion Act, includes the expansion of the open-source ecosystem as a core component of digital transformation. Section 3 outlines concrete measures to foster OSS innovation, including platform improvements for collaboration, increased funding for license compliance, and expert training programs. By embedding OSS within goals for open innovation, industry competitiveness, and public infrastructure, the strategy confirms OSS as a foundational element in Korea’s long-term digital planning.
🇨🇭 Switzerland¶
- 🔗 Federal Act on the Use of Electronic Means for the Fulfilment of Official Duties (EMBAG)
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📄 Overview:
This federal act embeds open source principles directly into Switzerland's national digital governance strategy. By dedicating Article 9 entirely to "Open Source Software," the law elevates OSS from a purely technical consideration to a fundamental component of the federal government's approach to digital transformation, ensuring its role in fulfilling official duties.
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🔗 Strategic Guidelines for Open Source Software in the Federal Administration
- 📄 Overview:
This document itself is a core strategic guideline that embeds OSS within the Federal Administration's digital policy. The "Reference to other strategies" section explicitly links the use of open source to high-level national goals, including the Digital Federal Administration Strategy, the Digital Switzerland Strategy, and the promotion of digital sovereignty.
🇬🇧 United kingdom¶
- 🔗 The Digital, Data and Technology Playbook
- 📄 Overview:
The Digital, Data and Technology Playbook embeds open-source software into the UK government’s strategic digital planning by recommending the use of open and interoperable code across DDaT (Digital, Data and Technology) projects. Chapter 8 explicitly encourages software to be open source and platform-agnostic to enhance interoperability, innovation, and sustainability. As a guiding framework for all central government departments, the Playbook positions OSS as a foundational element in delivering modern, secure, and user-centered public services.
🇺🇸 United States¶
- 🔗 U.S. Digital Services Playbook
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📄 Overview:
This playbook is a high-level strategic document that embeds open source principles into the U.S. government's approach to building digital services. Plays like "Choose a modern technology stack" (Play 8) and "Default to open" (Play 13) make the consideration and publication of OSS a core part of the official strategy for effective and modern government IT development.
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📄 Overview:
This memorandum is a foundational strategic document that fulfills a U.S. Open Government National Action Plan commitment. It establishes a government-wide framework for software development that institutionalizes the principles of code reuse and open source. By setting clear objectives and requirements, it embeds OSS as a key component of federal IT strategy and management.
- 📄 Overview:
This Act embeds open source security directly into the Homeland Security Act of 2002, a foundational national security law. By assigning permanent duties to the Director of CISA in Section 2220F, it elevates the security of the OSS ecosystem from a best practice to a core, strategic responsibility of the U.S. government's cybersecurity mission.
🇺🇾 Uruguay¶
- 🔗 Law No. 19179: Regulation on Digital Information Formats and Software
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📄 Overview:
As a national law, this document represents a high-level strategic commitment to open source. Article 4 further embeds this by directing the Executive Branch to regulate a national transition to these standards and to orient all future IT procurements and contracts toward compliance with the law's principles.
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📄 Overview:
This document is itself a key national strategic plan. It embeds open source commitments by formally adopting the D9 objectives (page 4), which explicitly include sharing source code. This integrates an OSS ethos directly into Uruguay's high-level roadmap for artificial intelligence in government.
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🔗 Decree No. 44/015: Regulation of Law 19.179 on Digital Information and Software
- 📄 Overview:
Article 6 directly embeds open source principles into recurring government planning. It obligates all public entities to create annual Information Technology plans that explicitly detail their software acquisition and development strategies, ensuring these plans align with the legal preference for free software.
🇪🇺 European Union¶
- 🔗 Regulation (EU) 2024/2847 (Cyber Resilience Act)
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📄 Overview:
The Cyber Resilience Act strategically embeds OSS into the EU's security framework. Recital (17) highlights the goal of fostering OSS development. It establishes a distinct, light-touch regulatory regime for "open-source software stewards" (Recital 19) and provides for voluntary security attestation programs (Article 25), recognizing the unique nature of the open-source ecosystem.
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🔗 European Commission digital strategy: Next generation digital Commission
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📄 Overview:
This digital strategy document firmly embeds open source software as a core component of the Commission's digital transformation. OSS is cited as a preferred solution for digital sovereignty (page 5), a key method for creating a seamless digital landscape (page 14), and its further development is a listed key action for the future (page 21), demonstrating a deep strategic commitment.
- 📄 Overview:
This document is a dedicated strategic plan for OSS, linking its goals to the highest levels of EU policy. Chapter 3 explicitly aligns the strategy with the President's political guidelines for achieving technological sovereignty, the European Interoperability Framework, the Commission's Digital Strategy, the Digital Europe programme, and the European strategy for data.
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