A shared cloud initiative aims to keep school data in Germany while teaching digital skills — not dependence on individual technology providers.
In six German states, digital sovereignty is about to expand from the boardroom — and government institutions — to the classroom. Digital sovereignty, a concept that began in Europe but which is now recognized globally, is the notion that data originating in one country should stay in that country. It also implies an attempt to end dependence on foreign-controlled hardware, software, and infrastructure.
The project behind this expansion into education (there are others, notably in France) is KoDaS. The name is an acronym that stands for “Kollaborations- und Dateiablagesystem,” German for “collaboration and file storage system,” a platform that’s meant to be an alternative to currently used proprietary solutions that are primarily from the US. It’s an integral part of the Educational Cloud Infrastructure initiative (in German Pädagogische Cloud Infrastruktur or PCI), a joint initiative to establish a shared cloud infrastructure for educational applications.
While KoDaS is the platform’s official branding, under the hood the platform will be IONOS Nextcloud Workspace, a version of Nextcloud, a German-made open source self-hosted cloud platform that’s used internationally (and also a FOSS Force Platinum Sponsor), that’s been customized for the education sector to be used by administrators and students.
It’ll be hosted and delivered by IONOS, a German web-hosting and cloud-infrastructure provider that this week announced it’s been awarded the contract for the setup, migration, and operation of KoDaS. The company says that KoDaS will be hosted exclusively in its German data centers, helping assure that what starts as a German homework assignment remains a German homework assignment.
Use of the project by school systems is going to be opt-in; the German states aren’t forcing it on local districts.
“With KoDaS, we’re establishing a common European foundation for digital collaboration in schools across six federal states,” Achim Weiß, CEO of IONOS SE, said in a statement. “Our cloud solution, developed in Germany, stands for security, reliability, and above all, digital sovereignty — which is indispensable, especially in the education sector.”
What the States Get for Their Dime
Although it’s just coming to fruition, KoDaS has been on the drawing board at least since last December. That’s when govdigital eG, a cooperative of German public-sector IT providers, issued a tender for KoDaS on behalf of PCI and its six participating German states — Berlin, Bremen, Hamburg, Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia, and Rhineland-Palatinate — to establish shared cloud infrastructure for educational applications.
When implemented, it will supply teachers and students with a complete digital workspace for file storage, collaborative document editing, and communication, without involving the likes of Dropbox, Microsoft, Google, or Slack. The four-year agreement will bill according to active users, with five tiers ranging from up to 50,000 to over 500,000 users, which means that school districts can use the solution according to actual needs and expand gradually. Also, the program isn’t confined to the six initial states; additional federal states can join.
“KoDaS demonstrates how joint procurement can work across state borders,” explained govdigital’s COO, Jens Fromm. “The participating states receive a powerful and scalable solution that combines digital sovereignty with cost-effective procurement.”
How Nextcloud, IONOS, and German Politicos See It
While Nextcloud and IONOS underscore the project’s digital sovereignty aspects, they both anchor their stances in the project’s connection with education.
In a blog that went up on Nextcloud’s website on Tuesday, senior communicatons manager Kim Pohlmann makes a McLuhanesque “the medium is the message” style point that use of the platform alone will supply something of a digital education:
“Students develop not only digital skills but also habits and expectations about the technologies they use. When their experience is limited to the products of a few major technology companies, those products can become the default choice later in their professional lives. This familiarity, in turn, makes switching to other solutions more difficult, as organizations face concerns about user acceptance, training, and change management.”
In the same blog, Frank Karlitschek, Nextcloud’s co-founder and CEO, who’s deeply engaged in Germany’s political debate over digital sovereignty, also weighed in with a statement:
“Schools should teach digital skills, not dependency on individual technology providers. If we want future generations to make independent decisions about technology, we need to familiarize them with open source technologies from an early age.”
As for the government bureaucrats, the project is another important brick in the wall.
“With the Educational Cloud Infrastructure, we are jointly creating reliable framework conditions for a secure and sovereign digital education infrastructure,” Torsten Brandt, chair of the PCI steering committee and representative of the Hessian Ministry of Culture, Education, and Opportunities, said. “KoDaS is another important building block. The participating states will be able to use the solution easily and in line with their needs in the future.”
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
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