Sovereign Tech Agency Germany

Sovereign Tech Agency Germany is a Berlin-based public-sector body that funds the development and maintenance of open-source software used as digital public infrastructure. Funded under the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate (BMWi), its mandate centres on reducing dependency on proprietary vendors by strengthening the open-source ecosystem underpinning German and European public services. Policy and Research Lead Paul Sharratt represents the agency at the Sovereign Tech Europe conference in Brussels on 23 April 2026, speaking in the open-source fireside session alongside Laszlo Igneczi and Felix Reda.

The agency's model treats open-source software as infrastructure analogous to roads or power grids — maintained for the public benefit rather than for proprietary commercial return. Its funding programmes target foundational software libraries and tools on which critical services depend but which often lack a sustainable maintenance funding model. The agency has become a reference point in European policy discussions about how public institutions can reduce strategic dependency on US hyperscaler infrastructure by investing in alternative open-source tooling.

Sharratt's appearance at the Brussels sovereignty summit places the agency's open-source infrastructure model within the broader EU debate about what digital sovereignty means in practice, alongside cloud procurement frameworks and regulatory instruments. The agency represents one of the few examples of a government body directly funding software infrastructure maintenance rather than procuring finished products.