From Word and Excel to LibreOffice: Danish ministry says goodbye to Microsoft
www.heise.de
All employees at the Danish Ministry of Digital Affairs are to work without Microsoft. Instead, Linux and LibreOffice will be used, says the minister.
  • foliumcreations@lemmy.worldEnglish
    61·
    2 days ago

    That webpage was basically impossible to view without consenting to third party cookies, some EU legislature malicious compliance. Does anyone have a transcript or footnotes?

    • sturlabragason@lemmy.worldEnglish
      14·
      2 days ago

      From Word and Excel to LibreOffice: Danish ministry says goodbye to Microsoft Martin Holland The Danish Ministry of Digitization is to completely abandon Microsoft in the coming months and use Linux instead of Windows and switch from Office 365 to LibreOffice. Minister Caroline Stage (Moderaterne) announced this in an interview with the daily newspaper Politiken. It comes just a few days after the country’s two largest municipalities initiated similar steps. This summer, half of the ministry’s employees will be equipped with Linux and LibreOffice. If everything goes as expected, the entire ministry will be free of Microsoft by the fall, Politiken summarizes.

      Far too dependent on a few providers

      The Ministry of Digitalization’s move away from Microsoft is therefore taking place against the backdrop of a new digitalization strategy in which the Kingdom’s “digital sovereignty” is given priority. According to newspaper reports, the opposition is also calling for a reduction in dependence on US tech companies. Just a few days ago, the administration of the capital Copenhagen announced its intention to review the use of Microsoft software. The second-largest municipality, Aarhus, has already started to replace Microsoft services. Stage has now told Politiken that they should cooperate and that it is not a race. All municipalities should work together and strengthen open source.

      When asked how her ministry would react if the changeover was not so easy, Stage replied that they would then simply return to the old system for a transitional period and seek other options: “We won’t get any closer to the goal if we don’t start.” So far, she has only heard from employees who welcome the move. But in her ministry, which is mainly concerned with digitalization, she expects a lot of interest anyway. She also assured them that the initiative is not about Microsoft alone, as they are generally far too dependent on a few providers.

      As background to the move, the article also refers to the events at the International Criminal Court, where an email account operated by Microsoft was disconnected. This caused an uproar across Europe. In Denmark, there is also the fact that the new US President Donald Trump has been announcing for weeks that his country wants to take over Greenland. The island in the North Atlantic is a self-governing part of Denmark, and the outrage at Trump’s proposal is huge. The desire to reduce dependence on US companies is therefore evidently even greater there than in the rest of Europe.

      (mho)

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      This article was originally published in German. It was translated with technical assistance and editorially reviewed before publication.

  • anistorian@lemmy.worldEnglish
    21·
    1 day ago

    While this is a great first step, I would like to remind you, that this is only one ministry containing maybe a couple of thousands employees.

    As a comparison Copenhagen Municipality has around 45.000 employees - not all of them requiring computers of course.

    But it illustrates that if real change is the ambition, nothing is going to happen before the municipalities gets involved.

    And employees of a digitalisation ministry of course if gonna get excited, but imagine 60 year old Hanne Andersens uproar, when she hears that she has to learn a new OS or software suite to process drivers license applications or document travel expenses for s a disabled child.

    So while it is great it starts to get some publicity, that we are highly dependent on a few very greedy and morally ambiguous corporations, it is just a very small first step, with a very long and hurdled road in front of us, that will get very little publicity.