Denmark Begins its Exit from Microsoft — and This is Just the Beginning

Denmark has been in an interesting position this year. The country has been a strong supporter of the big-brother esque EU Chat Control legislation, while simultaneously pushing its Digital Ministry away from Microsoft toward open source.

And just two days ago, the government faced backlash over a proposed VPN bill.

But now? We have another move from them (in Danish) that shows they are serious about open source.

SIA Open: What's Going On?

The Færdselsstyrelsen (Danish Road Traffic Authority) is becoming the first agency to pilot SIA Open, a government-wide project by Statens IT (Danish Governmental IT Agency) designed to replace Microsoft services with open source alternatives.

With this, they are not stopping at just Office apps. Færdselsstyrelsen will be replacing both the Windows operating system and Microsoft's suite of applications (Word, Excel, Teams, and Outlook) with open source alternatives.

Though information on the exact alternatives they will be switching to hasn't been made public yet. The agency has 600 employees across 11 teams and is headquartered in Ribe, but only some of those employees will be taken through the transition.

Stefan Søsted, the Director of Færdselsstyrelsen, explained their reasoning behind the move to DR:

It is a question of being properly master in our own house and having full control of the data we have. At the Road Traffic Authority, we have some essential information that we really want to be sure we know where is.

Adding that vendor lock-in was a real concern:

If you make yourself too dependent on some suppliers like Microsoft, for example, you risk that they charge too much.

While Færdselsstyrelsen's pilot involves only a portion of their 600-person workforce, Statens IT has much bigger plans for SIA Open. They aim to have up to 15,000 government users across multiple state agencies move to open source solutions.

When asked of their views of the situation, Microsoft Denmark responded to DR with what feels like a run-of-the-mill PR statement:

Microsoft's solutions are competitively and fairly priced and are used in the public sector because they combine high security with innovation and efficient collaboration. We welcome competition, and there need not be a contradiction between open source and what Microsoft delivers.

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