Open Source on BeLibre - Belgian Think Tank on Digital Autonomy

Digisprong is looking for partners for an open source procurement in Flemish education

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Kenniscentrum Digisprong published a public procurement in early April 2026 that is worth reading carefully. Not because public procurements are generally compelling reading, but because this one explicitly asks for open source expertise, didactic depth and knowledge of digital sovereignty. Budget: up to 700,000 euros. Deadline for tenders: 1 June 2026. Information session: 5 May 2026.

For anyone who wants to know the background of Digisprong: read our earlier article first. The short version: the Flemish government has spent five years quietly building an open source learning infrastructure for its two million people in education, and is now taking that to the next level by making open source the content theme of its professional development as well.

A Belgian tool is quietly running medical imaging worldwide

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Somewhere in a place you have never heard of - in a hospital in rural Senegal, a clinic in Peru or a radiology department in the heart of Brussels - a doctor is looking at a medical scan. There is a reasonable chance that scan is being served by software built in Liège.

Orthanc is a free, open-source DICOM server for medical imaging. It was initiated in 2011 by Sébastien Jodogne at the University Hospital of Liège, with its first public release on July 19, 2012. Since then it has become one of the most widely deployed medical imaging tools in the world, running in hospitals, research institutions, and clinics across dozens of countries. The Orthanc Team, a Belgian consultancy run by Alain Mazy and Benoît Crickboom, handles community support, plugin development, and deployment for hospitals and software companies worldwide. Sébastien Jodogne continues development from his research lab at UCLouvain. They deliberately keep it small: focused on development and documentation, without the overhead of enterprise support contracts and shareholder obligations.

Five years of Digisprong: how the Flemish government quietly built an open digital learning infrastructure and is now shifting into a higher gear

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

For the past five years, the Flemish government has been quietly building an open digital learning infrastructure for its two million people in education: on open source, on European servers, with public money. This article tells the story of how it grew, why it matters, and what the new Digisprong procurement adds to it.

It was the summer of 2014. In schools across Flanders, teachers sat behind their computers, armed with export buttons and download files, trying to salvage what they could. EloV, the electronic learning environment that the VVKSO had been offering to more than 140 Catholic secondary schools since 2005, was taken offline on 1 September for good. The Blackboard licence had become too expensive. The collaboration with KU Leuven was over. That was that.

What Academia Now Tells Governments About Digital Dependency

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Things are starting to shift in the field of digital dependency. The conversation in the public sector has moved from civil society warnings to parliamentary reports, from IT conferences to cabinet agendas. Academia was tracking this before it became a policy priority: Paul van Vulpen began researching digital sovereignty and decentralised IT governance when neither was high on anyone’s agenda. He defended his dissertation Debating Digital Dominance: Decentralized Technology Governance For Strategic Autonomy at Utrecht University in January 2026.

The pigeon that flew back: how Belgium quietly chose open source messaging

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Imagine: the year is 1914. Somewhere on the Western Front, a small pigeon is released with a message tied to its leg. It doesn’t know why. It doesn’t know for whom. It simply flies — reliable, unseen, tireless — and delivers the message.

For centuries, the pigeon was the gold standard of secure communication. No wires to tap. No central server to hack. Decentralised by nature. And surprisingly hard to intercept.

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.