Switzerland's Federal Chancellery is preparing to roll out a free and open-source (FOSS) workplace suite to around 3,000 government employees as an alternative running alongside Microsoft 365, part of a broader European push towards digital sovereignty. The move follows a feasibility study, and separately, the Swiss Armed Forces are moving even faster with their own migration away from Microsoft, reflecting growing unease among European public bodies about reliance on US cloud software providers.

The Chancellery's rollout, expected from late 2027, will initially cover 3,000 of the federal government's roughly 47,000 employees at a projected cost of CHF 9 million (£8.2 million), a fraction of the CHF 1.1 billion the government has previously spent on Microsoft licences. It builds on a "BOSS" proof-of-concept trial with 172 users testing browser-based tools for email, documents, calendars and video conferencing, which found the approach viable for standard tasks but not fully compatible with Microsoft 365 or intended as permanent infrastructure. The next phase, covering under 10% of federal staff over roughly 15 months, will use Germany's openDesk suite, already adopted by German states Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The plan sits within Switzerland's Digital Switzerland Strategy 2026 and 2024's EMBAG law, while the Swiss military aims to complete its own Microsoft exit by October 2026, echoing a similar LibreOffice migration by Austria's armed forces.