● Covered by 1 source · 1 reportLow impact1 negative
Denmark's Ministry of Digitization ends open-source office suite pilot project
Key points
- Pilot project replaced Microsoft Office with Collabora.
- Involved 38 employees starting in 2025.
- Ended within six months due to formatting and tracking issues.
- Ministry did not formally evaluate the project's outcome.
Pilot Project Termination
Denmark's Ministry of Digitization, now merged into the Ministry for Research, Education, and Digitization, concluded its pilot project aimed at replacing Microsoft Office with an open-source alternative. The project, initiated in 2025, involved 38 employees transitioning to the British open-source Collabora office suite from Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.
Reasons for Collapse
The experiment, intended to reduce Denmark's reliance on American technology, reportedly ended less than six months after its launch. Employees reported issues with style, paragraph formatting, blank pages, and challenges with tracking changes. The project concluded by February 2026, coinciding with an early election call by the Danish government.
Lack of Evaluation
Despite the project's termination months ago, Professor Mikkel Flyberbom of the Copenhagen Business School noted that the ministry has not formally evaluated the pilot project. He emphasized the importance of learning from such initiatives and sharing experiences with other public sector entities.
Alternative Choices
The Collabora suite, based on LibreOffice, was chosen for the project and needed to integrate with the ministry's F2 case management system. Other open-source alternatives like OnlyOffice, OpenOffice, and Calligra were not included in the testing. The decision to test only one open-source alternative remains unclear.
✨ This summary was generated by AI from the outlets' reporting listed below. It is not independently verified and may contain errors — check the original sources. How BrevFeed works →
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Reporting from
Denmark's Ministry of Digitization ended a pilot project to replace Microsoft Office with the open-source Collabora suite after less than six months. The project, involving 38 employees, faced issues with formatting and change tracking, leading to its quiet termination before an early election.