P Ascal Braun is afraid of the Stone Age, which is why he is currently campaigning with verve for the software of the American technology group Micros

Petition against the ban on Microsoft Office programs

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2021-06-21 08:30:06

P Ascal Braun is afraid of the Stone Age, which is why he is currently campaigning with verve for the software of the American technology group Microsoft. A few weeks ago, the vocational student from Karlsruhe started an online petition on the website change.org with the catchy title: “Against the ban on Microsoft products in schools in Baden-Württemberg”. More than 7,000 people already support the petition, and he wants to bring it to the state parliament’s petition committee soon. “This ban would throw us back in our everyday school life in the Stone Age,” it says. “We cannot accept that, especially in the current pandemic times and beyond.” The Microsoft Office 365 product is used extensively, even in authorities. “That’s why we don’t understand why we shouldn’t be allowed to go to schools.” A similar petition in Hessen has already been concluded: it has found more than 16,000 supporters.

The warning about the “ban” is formulated in a somewhat pointed manner, there is still no formal ban in Baden-Württemberg on the use of office products in schools. The state data protection officer of Baden-Württemberg, Stefan Brink, points this out. He must feel personally addressed as the addressee of the petition. “I did not ban the software, on the contrary, I spent months trying to find a legally compliant solution,” he clarifies. But these efforts have failed, a few weeks ago he wrote in a recommendation for the Ministry of Culture in Stuttgart: The risks involved in using Microsoft services are “unacceptably high” in schools. The schools do not have complete control over the overall system and cannot understand which personal data is processed, how and for what purposes. Furthermore, they could not prove that the processing was reduced to the minimum necessary for this purpose. In the next school year one will have to investigate the numerous complaints from students, parents and teachers against the use. He therefore recommends that schools look elsewhere.