A look behind the scenes at the KRZN InnoLab: Why the combination of openDesk standards, strong partnerships, and local line-of-business application integration is the key to digital sovereignty for our municipalities.
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The digital sovereignty of public administration is not a theoretical luxury problem, but a tangible strategic necessity. For the Municipal Data Processing Centre Niederrhein (KRZN), sovereignty above all means securing the long-term ability of its 46 affiliated municipalities to act independently and determine their own technology. The goal is to have the freedom to make decisions about IT infrastructure independently at any time and in an emergency.
The NOVA project is developing precisely this answer: a modern administrative workplace based entirely on Open Source. But how do you take such an ambitious project from theory into the real, highly complex infrastructure of a municipal data center?
The Milestone: Successful Deployment in the Test Environment
A major and pioneering step has already been achieved: the initial software installation in the KRZN data center was successful! NOVA has now left the purely conceptual phase.
An important focus of the chosen approach: this is not an isolated Open Source island. For a digital workplace to gain acceptance in everyday municipal administration, it must integrate seamlessly into the established, highly diverse application landscape. NOVA therefore combines leading Open Source components from the ZenDiS openDesk environment – such as Open-Xchange for groupware, Nextcloud for collaboration, and Collabora Online for document editing – with integration into the existing infrastructure.
This includes, above all, connecting the central municipal line-of-business applications and integrating the KRZN’s document management system, the Fabasoft eGov-Suite. Only this way can a seamless and genuine alternative for everyday administrative work be achieved.
Univention as Strategic Coordinator and Enabler
To orchestrate this complex ecosystem, KRZN relies on Univention GmbH as its strategic partner. With the Nubus Identity and Access Management system, Univention provides the indispensable technological foundation for managing identities, user accounts, and access rights, as well as Single Sign-on (SSO) to the connected services. The Bremen-based IT company also takes on a central coordination role: It keeps the various Open Source vendors aligned and enables KRZN to gradually transition the cloud deployment into a resilient, dedicated on-premises installation.
This transfer of knowledge and the partnership-based support were a real accelerator for the InnoLab team. Without Univention and its partner viakom, who have excellent knowledge of the groupware standards from the openDesk environment, we would probably have needed an enormous amount of our own resources to acquire the in-depth knowledge required to build a functioning environment.
How Does the Project Continue?
The successful installation in the test environment provides the foundation for the next steps. An intensive hardening and stabilization phase will now follow. Together with the InnoLab working group, which includes users from the municipalities, the first practical tests have already begun.
The goal is clear: By autumn 2026, a well-founded cost-effectiveness and effort assessment is to be prepared. It will provide the transparent basis for decision-making by the KRZN committees, enabling NOVA to transition from the InnoLab into a permanent, productive project for the more than 16,000 workstations in the Lower Rhine region. This will make NOVA a central, practical component of KRZN’s comprehensive sovereignty concept, which is currently being developed together with sovereignty expert Ilja Doert.
We at KRZN look forward to continuing this journey together with our partners and municipalities – for a self-determined, innovative, and future-proof administration.
If you would like to learn more about the goals of NOVA and its range of functions, you should watch my presentation at the Univention Summit 2026:
How do you feel about the topic of Open Source in public administration? Do you have questions about the NOVA project? Feel free to write to us in the comments or contact the KRZN InnoLab at ernst.mayer@krzn.de.
