Denmark is moving one of its government ministries from Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365 to the open-source LibreOffice. It’s another sign that large organizations, especially ones in Europe, are trying to move away from locked-down digital services.
Caroline Stage Olsen, the minister for Digital Affairs in Denmark, confirmed that the country’s Ministry of Digitalization is switching to LibreOffice. The migration from Microsoft 365 and Office will begin in July, and it’s expected to be complete within a few months.
Olsen said in a (translated) LinkedIn post, “Far too much public digital infrastructure is today tied up with very few foreign suppliers. This makes us vulnerable. Also financially. That is why we are now testing in parallel at the Ministry of Digitization how it works in practice when we work with open source solutions. Several municipalities are doing the same.”
TheMinistry of Digital Affairs, or Digitaliseringsministeriet in Danish, is not a particularly large organization. However, it could be a successful testing ground for other government agencies across Europe looking to move away from Microsoft. The German federal state ofSchleswig-Holsteinstarted a similar program last year,moving from Windows and Officeto Linux and LibreOffice across the 30,000 PCs used in its local government.
The switch to LibreOffice is part of a larger ‘digital sovereignty’ push across Denmark’s government infrastructure, whichother European countries are also working towards. Olsen made it clear that Denmark isn’t looking at “isolation or digital nationalism”—every country creating its own office suite and IT infrastructure from scratch would be a bit silly. LibreOffice does give everyone full control over their own data, though, making it a great option for anyone concerned over centralized services like Microsoft 365. Givenrecent events, it’s not difficult to see why Denmark might want to reduce its dependency on American tech companies.
LibreOffice isn’t the only alternative software under consideration by European countries. France’s Interministerial Directorate for Digital Affairs (DINUM) and Germany’s Center for Digital Sovereignty of Public Administration (ZenDiS) are both working ona web-based collaborative writing toolcalled Docs.Collabora Online, the web office suite based on LibreOffice that can also be self-hosted, could also see higher adoption in the coming years.
It’s great to see LibreOffice and other open-source alternatives taking off in large organizations. More usersusuallymeans more developers and funding, which means more improvements, so everyone wins. Well, maybe not Microsoft shareholders.
