Schleswig-Holstein, one in every of Germany’s 16 states, on Wednesday confirmed plans to maneuver tens of hundreds of methods from Microsoft Home windows to Linux. The announcement follows beforehand established plans emigrate the state authorities off Microsoft Workplace in favor of open supply LibreOffice.
As noticed by The Doc Basis, the federal government has apparently completed its pilot run of LibreOffice and is now saying plans to develop to extra open supply choices.
In 2021, the state authorities introduced plans to maneuver 25,000 computer systems to LibreOffice by 2026. On the time, Schleswig-Holstein stated it had already been testing LibreOffice for 2 years.
As introduced on Minister-President Daniel Gunther’s webpage this week, the state authorities confirmed that it is shifting all methods to the Linux working system (OS), too. Per a website-provided translation:
With the cupboard resolution, the state authorities has made the concrete starting of the swap away from proprietary software program and in the direction of free, open-source methods and digitally sovereign IT workplaces for the state administration’s roughly 30,000 staff.
The state authorities is providing a coaching program that it stated it would replace as obligatory.
Relating to LibreOffice, the federal government maintains the likelihood that some jobs might use software program so specialised that they will not be capable of transfer to open supply software program.
In 2021, Jan Philipp Albrecht, then-minister for Power, Agriculture, the Surroundings, Nature, and Digitalization of Schleswig-Holstein, mentioned curiosity in shifting the state authorities off of Home windows.
“As a result of excessive {hardware} necessities of Home windows 11, we’d have an issue with older computer systems. With Linux we do not have that,” Albrecht advised Heise journal, per a Google translation.
This week’s announcement additionally stated that the Schleswig-Holstein authorities will ditch Microsoft Sharepoint and Trade/Outlook in favor of open supply choices Nextcloud and Open-Xchange, and Mozilla Thunderbird together with the Univention lively listing connector.
Schleswig-Holstein can also be creating an open supply listing service to exchange Microsoft’s Lively Listing and an open supply telephony providing.
Digital sovereignty goals
Explaining the choice, the Schleswig-Holstein authorities’s announcement named enhanced IT safety, value efficiencies, and collaboration between completely different methods as its perceived advantages of switching to open supply software program.
Additional, the federal government is pushing the concept of digital sovereignty, with Schleswig-Holstein Digitalization Minister Dirk Schrödter quoted within the announcement as evaluating the idea’s worth to that of vitality sovereignty. The announcement additionally quoted Schrödter as saying that digital sovereignty is not achievable “with the present normal IT office merchandise.”
Schrödter pointed to the state authorities’s rising reliance on cloud providers and stated that with associated proprietary software program, customers don’t have any affect on information movement and whether or not that information makes its strategy to different international locations.
Schrödter additionally claimed that the transfer would assist with the state’s finances by diverting cash from licensing charges to “actual programming providers from our home digital financial system” that might additionally create native jobs.
In 2021, Albrecht stated the state was reaching its limits with proprietary software program contracts as a result of “license charges have continued to rise in recent times,” per Google’s translation.
“Secondly, concerning our targets for the digitalization of administration, open supply merely provides us extra flexibility,” he added.
On the time, Albrecht claimed that 90 % of video conferences within the state authorities ran on the open supply program Jitsi, which was advantageous in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic as a result of the state was in a position to shortly improve video conferencing capability.
Moreover, he stated that as a result of the varsity portal was primarily based on (unnamed) open supply software program, “we are able to design the interface flexibly and mix providers the way in which we would like.”
There are quite a few different examples globally of presidency entities switching to Linux in favor of open supply expertise. Federal governments with explicit curiosity in avoiding US-based applied sciences, together with North Korea and China, are some examples. The South Korean authorities has additionally shared plans to maneuver to Linux by 2026, and town of Barcelona shared migration plans in 2018.
However some authorities our bodies which have made the transfer regretted it and ended up crawling again to Home windows. Vienna launched the Debian-based distribution WIENUX in 2005 however gave up on migration by 2009.
In 2003, Munich introduced it could be shifting some 14,000 PCs off Home windows and to Linux. In 2013, the LiMux undertaking completed, however excessive related prices and person dissatisfaction resulted in Munich saying in 2017 that it could spend the following three years reverting again to Home windows.
Albrecht in 2021 addressed this failure when talking to Heise, saying, per Google’s translation:
The principle downside there was that the staff weren’t sufficiently concerned. We try this higher. We’re planning lengthy transition phases with parallel use. And we’re introducing open supply step-by-step the place the departments are prepared for it. This additionally creates the rationale for additional rollout as a result of folks see that it really works.
