Switzerland's Federal Government Is Replacing Microsoft on 3k Computers
The Swiss federal government is launching a pilot program to migrate 3,000 workstations from Microsoft 365 to open-source alternatives. This initiative aims to address concerns regarding digital sovereignty, foreign data access, and rising licensing costs.
Why it matters
This move represents a significant shift in government IT policy, highlighting the growing global trend of public institutions seeking independence from major proprietary software vendors.
Switzerland's federal government has launched a pilot program to replace Microsoft 365 with open source alternatives across 3,000 workstations. That's about 7% of the federal workforce. The target is to complete the migration by end of 2027.
This move follows a successful proof-of-concept and a new digital sovereignty law. A separate fast-track military migration is also already underway.
The Federal Chancellery is investing CHF 9 million in an open-source workplace rollout for 3,000 federal employees.
On September 3, 2026, the Federal Council published results of "PoC BOSS", a feasibility proof-of-concept involving 172 federal employees who tested the openDesk suite, a German open-source collaboration platform.
During the proof-of-concept phase, core office tasks like document processing and email received positive assessments, while large-scale video conferencing still showed technical limitations.
Based on the 'success' of the PoC phase with 172 employees, the pilot is now launched for 3,000 employees.
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