This paper presents a qualitative and quantitative study on the role of policies in Denmark and Germany in shaping the adoption of open standards and software in government. A comprehensive functionality test, surveys and interviews with suppliers and users in local authorities of both countries have been conducted, together with policy document analyses. While in Denmark open document standards have been bindingly introduced by legislation, Germany adopts a blended top-down and bottom-up approach, only providing recommendations. Although, as a result, it seems that Denmark ranks much higher in the adoption of open document standards, the overall picture is blurrier, as for instance only a small minority of public employees use open source software. The authors also suggest that the need for open standards might actually be overstated, as the rapid adoption of e.g. the PDF document format has made it in practice almost irrelevant.