Do good and talk about it – after focusing on the first part during its first year, the OpenRail Association is now catching up on the second. Following this, our Chair, Jochen Decker (SBB), and Vice-Chair, Nicole Göbel (DB), delivered a keynote at the Hamburg IT Strategy Days 2025, one of Europe’s largest events for CIOs and IT decision-makers.

Under the title “OpenRail Association: Using Open Source to Achieve Greater Interoperability and Efficiency in the Railway Industry”, Nicole and Jochen highlighted how the global railway sector faces common challenges in improving efficiency and interoperability, particularly through digitalisation. They emphasised that Open Source provides a proven, low-barrier, community-driven model of collaboration which is widely adopted across many industries. This approach motivated them to co-found the OpenRail Association, a neutral Open Source platform designed to foster independence, interoperability, and efficiency in the railway sector’s digital transformation.

Lively discussions and follow-up questions demonstrated growing interest in Open Source across industries, despite differing requirements and conditions. The shared understanding that major digitalization challenges are best tackled collaboratively resonated with many attendees, making the OpenRail Association’s story particularly well received.

📂 Presentation slides can be downloaded here.

In the Press

Jochen and Nicole’s keynote has also gained media attention, including coverage in CIO Online (French) and CIO.de (German).