Switzerland begins testing alternatives to Microsoft 365 to protect its « most sensitive data » and strengthen digital sovereignty

Switzerland’s federal government wants to move away from any reliance on Microsoft 365, as it begins testing alternatives to replace the American-made software suite. It’s a recurring theme of European countries pursuing digital sovereignty, as we saw earlier this year when the French government began dropping Windows 10/11 in favor of Linux-based operating system ‘distros’.

Alternatives to Microsoft’s long-standing ‘Office’ mainstays already exist, with ‘Euro-Office’, for example, advertising itself as a « sovereign solution for collaborative document editing« , so finding potential picks presumably wouldn’t be too difficult. However, choosing which app replacement to trust with the Swiss government’s « most sensitive data » will be the hard part (via It’s FOSS).

3,000 Swiss workstations will drop Microsoft 365

Rows of Swiss national flags hang across façades and narrow streets in Geneva’s Old Town. — Rising license costs are also attributed to the Swiss switch, but that isn’t much of a new trend. (Image credit: Getty Images | Sunphol Sorakul)

For my money, the most interesting part is the data protection reasoning, as Professor Matthias Stürmer at Bern University of Applied Sciences described his concerns about the implied risk of leaks from a system controlled by foreign governments. Stürmer predictably lists rising license costs as a secondary problem, but it’s frontloaded by the move away from America’s Microsoft.

We know that foreign governments can access this data — this is available at any time.

Professor Matthias Stürmer, BFH (via RTS)

For now, it’s just a trial that could yield unsatisfactory results, ultimately leading the Swiss government to stick with Microsoft 365. Either way, the pilot is apparently expected to move 7% of federal admin staff and their 3,000 workstations to whichever alternative suites are selected, taking private government data with them.

On the other hand, Microsoft’s own Sovereign Cloud already focuses on data sovereignty, so it’s not as if the company isn’t aware of these kinds of concerns. The platform « ensures customer data stays in Europe, under European Law — and encryption is under full control of customers, » but that hasn’t been enough to convince the governments of Germany, France, and now Switzerland.