84 lines
4.0 KiB
Markdown
84 lines
4.0 KiB
Markdown
+++
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title = "The German Digital Healthcare Agency joins the Matrix.org Foundation"
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date = "2023-06-29T07:00:00Z"
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[taxonomies]
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author = ["Thib"]
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category = ["Foundation"]
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[extra]
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image = "https://matrix.org/blog/img/gematik_2020.png"
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+++
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We were already proud to [announce](/blog/2021/07/21/germany-s-national-healthcare-system-adopts-matrix/)
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that the national agency for the digitalisation of the healthcare system in
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Germany ([gematik](http://gematik.de)) had selected Matrix as the open standard
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on which to base all its interoperable instant messaging standard, back in 2021.
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We are now delighted to let the world know that they are doubling down on
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sovereignty and sustainability: gematik is the first organisation of the public
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sector to join the Matrix.org Foundation as a Silver member.
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## Collaboration in the public sector
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Our friends at the [FSFE](https://fsfe.org) have been calling for software used
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in public services to be free software in their
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[Public Money Public Code campaign](https://publiccode.eu/en/openletter/). As
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advocates of open standards and an open source project ourselves, this is
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something we can get behind.
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Software development can be an impenetrable world for people who don’t work in
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the field. It can sometimes be difficult for people outside of our industry to
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understand the importance of bitrotting and refactoring. One very unfortunate
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effect of this is that **new features are easy to fund because they feel very
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tangible, but the most critical housekeeping work is not as appealing**.
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Yet, without regular refactoring to clean things up, it gets increasingly costly
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and difficult to add new features. **Counterintuitively, spending money on “the
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boring tasks” is the most efficient use of money**: without it the technical
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stack would become either obsolete, bloated, or both, and it would be much more
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costly to move to something else or maintain an in-house fork.
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We’re very happy gematik is doing the right thing by supporting the technical
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stack it builds TI-Messenger on. By supporting the Matrix.org Foundation,
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gematik contributes to the sustainability of the protocol powering the
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communications of the German healthcare system… but not exclusively.
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## Sharing costs across public services, and with the private sector
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Matrix is an open standard, which means not only everyone can use it: when
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someone contributes to Matrix, everyone benefits from it. This makes Matrix
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particularly interesting for the public sector: if the German healthcare
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contributes to Matrix, the [German Armed Forces](https://element.io/case-studies/bundeswehr)
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benefit from it, and the other way around. **It allows both to contribute less
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of their budget, instead of contributing each to an entirely different
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product.** The German Federal Ministry of Defence already actively contributes
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to Matrix development and funding via its public IT services provider BWI GmbH,
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who relies on Element’s consulting services to develop their own Matrix-based
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messenger.
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But Matrix being open source, it also allows the public and private sector to
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share the costs of maintenance _by design_. **The public sector benefits from
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the contributions of the private sector to Matrix, and the opposite is true as
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well.**
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The Foundation plays a critical technical _and social_ role in this system: it
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centralises and curates contributions to the protocol so it remains unbiased,
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coherent, and efficient.
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## This is just a beginning
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We’re extremely happy to welcome the first public sector organisation in the
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Matrix.org Foundation! Given how popular Matrix is among governments and the
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public sector in general, we know this is just a beginning: it would be
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illogical to deploy any solution at a large scale without contributing to its
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sustainability.
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Whether you’re an organisation from the public or the private sector, looking to
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cut costs down by building on a common, standard and reliable foundation, you
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can [support Matrix](https://matrix.org/support/) and
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[join the Foundation](https://matrix.org/membership/) today.
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