It’s impressive to see that they save in the money they spend on licenses this quickly! It’s a little bit of work to transfer the current systems and get used to a different system, but it’s very doable it seems (albeit over years of work), as well as economically attractive. I hope this inspires the rest of the country!

60,000 employees must say tschüs to Microsoft
This work was already underway about five years ago in Schleswig-Holstein. In total, 60,000 administration, police and school teachers need to move away from tech giants’ software and to use open source programs.

Already from September this year, employees of the state administration are expected to have uninstalled Microsoft Office and replaced it with LibreOffice. The same should apply to the mail systems. Later, other IT systems need to be replaced, and even the state’s telephone system needs to be changed to open source.

Let’s hope a lot more EU countries take a look at the proces in Schleswig-Holstein :).

Very good article. Thanks OP for posting.

“Microsoft is dedicated to strengthening innovation, competitiveness and cybersecurity in Europe”. So? MS is still an American company.