Danish Government silently drops plan to dump MS Office
Denmark’s government quietly abandoned a pilot to replace Microsoft Office with the open-source Collabora suite after only six months, without publishing an evaluation or plans to resume. Commenters see this as another example of how political cycles, bureaucratic risk aversion and tendering rules, rather than pure technical merit, keep European public sectors tied to Microsoft despite viable alternatives. Many note that deep integration, legacy Excel workflows and user resistance make migration costly and complex, while others argue that without serious investment in open-source usability and interoperability, such sovereignty efforts will keep stalling.
Danish Collabora Pilot and Cancellation
- Agency piloted Collabora (via cBrain) with 38 staff as an alternative to MS Office, integrated into a central case system.
- Project was stopped when elections were called; there are no plans to resume it and it was never formally evaluated.
- Reported user frustrations: typography and formatting glitches, blank pages, and problems with track changes and format conversion.
- Some commenters lament the lack of transparency and lost opportunity to share lessons with the wider public sector.
Vendor Lock‑in, Politics, and Negotiation
- Several suspect such “we’ll drop Microsoft” announcements are often leverage to negotiate better licensing terms.
- Others emphasize long‑standing political and lobbying influence, and argue corruption or US tech hegemony helps keep governments on Microsoft.
- A few think this might simply reflect bureaucratic risk aversion rather than overt corruption.
Usability, Compatibility, and “Load‑Bearing” Office Files
- Strong consensus that compatibility with existing MS Office documents, especially complex Excel workbooks and macros, is the real barrier.
- “Load‑bearing” spreadsheets (payroll, billing, financial models) and ancient documents are seen as extremely hard to migrate safely.
- Even common tasks like mail‑merge for labels are reported as fragile or misaligned in open‑source suites.
- Users’ familiarity and resistance to change, plus need for training, are repeatedly cited as major social obstacles.
Open Source Alternatives: Potential and Limits
- LibreOffice, OnlyOffice, Collabora, WPS, and specialized tools (e.g., label printers, CSV‑focused apps, browser‑based “clean room” clones, experimental Rust spreadsheets) are discussed.
- Some claim LibreOffice is “good enough” and used successfully in parts of the public sector; others argue it falls “painfully short” for heavy Excel users.
- There is frustration that governments rarely fund targeted improvements or contribute back to these projects.
Government Procurement and Structural Barriers
- Public tenders are described as highly constrained: revenue thresholds, staff requirements, and preference for big integrators limit participation by small FLOSS vendors.
- Even when alternatives are piloted, short political cycles, mergers of ministries, and lack of long‑term ownership often kill projects mid‑stream.
Digital Sovereignty, Migration Tools, and Cloud Dependence
- Several argue true “digital sovereignty” needs robust migration tools that work without vendor cooperation (adversarial interoperability).
- Cloud suites like Office 365 deepen lock‑in via identity (Active Directory), Outlook, Teams, and workflow integration, not just Word/Excel themselves.
- Some hope AI could help reverse‑engineer formats, automate migrations, or even drive UIs to extract data; others see this as speculative.