As long as the German Federal Legislature will not recognize its constitutional accountability for vendorindependent file format standards, all future visions of the digital age are threatened to fail. Without implementation of open standards no interoperable information transmission and therefore in particular no e-government, no paperless offices and no electronic legal transactions will be feasible to the extent that has been promised for decades with tiresome regularity. Current statutory law and conceptual underlying ideas that have been adapted to cover mono-functional and analog technical capabilities still fail to dissolve barriers to interoperability. The present dissertation offers an analysis of this important subject, which, surprisingly enough, to date has hardly been discussed from a legal point of view. The accountability of the Federal State is demonstrated and effective courses of action are presented.