Guest Contribution on BeLibre - Belgian independent knowledge and policy platform

Do you trust me?

Joop Beris — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 11:00:00 +0100

This contribution was taken from the blog of Joop Beris with permission of the author.

“Do you trust me?” So began a former manager of mine during the ritualised humiliation we call a performance review. It was, to put it mildly, a discomfiting inquiry from a man whose own breaches of confidence had already rendered the term meaningless between us. But the discomfort runs deeper still, for it presupposes equality in a relationship that is fundamentally hierarchical. And if you think the dynamic between employee and employer is fraught, consider the even more lopsided transaction between citizen and state, where trust is demanded of one party while being conspicuously withheld by the other.

Schleswig-Holstein knows what it wants. That alone is a revolution

Thomas Desmedt — Sat, 02 May 2026 11:00:00 +0100

This guest contribution was reposted from LinkedIn and translated with the author’s permission.

I read the FT article somewhere between two meetings. And I had to stop for a moment.

Not because it was so impressive. But because it was so rare. A government saying what it wants, why it wants it, and then simply… starting.

“The important thing is that we become independent from centralised, monopolistic providers. That is what we are striving for, step by step.”

The end of MS Office in sight? Germany chooses ODF, the Netherlands lacks courage.

Marc Buiks — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 11:00:00 +0100

This guest contribution was republished from LinkedIn with permission from the author.

This month, the German federal government announced a notable decision through the so-called Deutschland-Stack: across all levels of government, from federal ministries down to municipalities, only two document formats are now permitted. Open Document Format (ODF) and PDF/UA. The popular Microsoft formats such as .docx (MS Word), .xlsx (MS Excel) and .pptx (MS PowerPoint) fall outside this framework.

BeLibre Sovereignty Map

Mon, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Interactive map where you can discover digital sovereignty in municipalities, schools, emergency services or other critical infrastructure in our country and beyond.