Switzerland pilots open source replacement for Microsoft 365 on 3,000 federal workstations

Switzerland's federal government has begun a pilot to move 3,000 workstations off Microsoft 365 and onto open source alternatives, with the migration due to finish by the end of 2027. According to It's FOSS, the rollout covers roughly 7% of the federal workforce and follows both a completed feasibility study and recently passed legislation on digital sovereignty.

A CHF 9 million pilot built on openDesk

The Federal Chancellery is investing CHF 9 million in the open source workplace rollout, It's FOSS reports, citing the Swiss broadcaster RTS. The software at the centre of the effort is openDesk, a German open-source collaboration platform.

The pilot builds on "PoC BOSS", a feasibility proof of concept whose results the Federal Council published on September 3, 2026. During that phase, 172 federal employees worked with openDesk: document processing and email were assessed positively, while large-scale video conferencing still showed technical limitations, according to the report.

The pilot will not cut Microsoft 365 off outright. The new environment runs in parallel with Microsoft's suite during this phase, which lets problems surface before any wider switch is attempted.

The sovereignty rationale

It's FOSS quotes Matthias Stürmer, a professor at the Bern University of Applied Sciences, who identifies three drivers behind the shift. First, US cloud legislation could open Swiss government data to foreign authorities. Second, dependency on a single foreign vendor creates operational risk to service continuity. Third, proprietary licence fees keep rising, leaving Switzerland with little negotiating leverage.

These concerns sit inside a broader policy arc. The EMBAG law, in force since 2024, requires federal agencies to publish government-developed software as open source by default. In December 2025, the Federal Council went further and designated digital sovereignty a primary focus theme, defining it as the federal government's ability to fulfil its essential mission without depending on an external supplier or country.

The military is moving first

Switzerland's armed forces are not waiting for the civilian pilot to conclude. According to It's FOSS, the military's Cyber Command unit is on track to replace Microsoft 365 entirely with openDesk by October 2026 — ahead of the Federal Chancellery's 2027 timeline — driven by the same concern about foreign access to sensitive data.

Why it matters

The pilot is a concrete test of whether European public administrations can untangle themselves from US software vendors in practice rather than only in policy documents. France and Germany have pursued similar initiatives, and a successful Swiss migration could add momentum to those efforts.

The commercial stakes are considerable. It's FOSS notes that the federal administration owns roughly 54,000 workstations in total, so a positive pilot outcome could pave the way for a much larger rollout, although no such decision has been announced. Microsoft, meanwhile, is investing more than CHF 325 million in Swiss AI and cloud infrastructure, an effort the report says is partly intended to blunt the sovereignty argument. The open question is whether openDesk's remaining weaknesses — most visibly in large-scale video conferencing — can be addressed quickly enough to keep the 2027 target within reach.