Open source is ofter considered as a cure-all against the risk of the EU lagging behind in the global race for digital transition.
Unfortunately, open source solutions demand at every stage of their life-cycle a hefty amount of technical, managerial and financial resources, often higher than with proprietary assets. Hence, whilst building a EU-wide digital strategy or infrastructure upon open source models does sound appealing (and more ethical), in practice such strategies must always be validated against the limited amount of resources the public sector has access to.
This is especially true of digital public services; therefore, a case study on digital public services in the EU will be presented.