Austria's armed forces switch to LibreOffice

Austria's armed forces have switched from Microsoft's Office programs to the open-source LibreOffice package. The reason for this is not to save on software license fees for around 16,000 workstations. "It was very important for us to show that we are doing this primarily (...) to strengthen our digital sovereignty, to maintain our independence in terms of ICT infrastructure and (...) to ensure that data is only processed in-house," emphasizes Michael Hillebrand from the Austrian Armed Forces' Directorate 6 ICT and Cyber.

This is because processing data in external clouds is out of the question for the Austrian Armed Forces, as Hillebrand explained on ORF radio station Ö1. It was already apparent five years ago that Microsoft Office would move to the cloud. Back then, in 2020, the decision-making process for the switch began and was completed in 2021.

Detailed planning and the training of internal developers for improvements and additional software began in 2022. Employees were already allowed to switch to LibreOffice at that time if they wished. In 2023, a German company was commissioned with support and external development, internal e-learning for LibreOffice was started and the software package was made mandatory in the first Armed Forces departments.

The Austrian Armed Forces make a contribution to open source

The use of open source software is not a one-way street for the armed forces. Adaptations and improvements required by the military are programmed and incorporated into the LibreOffice project. More than five man-years have already been paid for this, which can benefit all LibreOffice users.

"We are not doing this to save money," Hillebrand emphasized to ORF, "We are doing this so that the Armed Forces as an organization, which is there to function when everything else is down, can continue to have products that work within our sphere of influence." At the beginning of September, he and his colleague Nikolaus Stocker recounted the conversion process at the LibreOffice Conference 2025.

MS Office for special cases with approval

The starting point in 2021 was Microsoft Office 2016 Professional with numerous VBA and Access solutions. However, even then, the Austrian Armed Forces did not use Microsoft's email or collaboration solutions, but self-hosted Linux servers with Samba. Nevertheless, Microsoft Office was deeply embedded in the IT workflows. Incidentally, the army's smartphones are made by Apple.

This year, MS Office 2016 was removed from all of the army's computers. And anyone who thinks they still need Microsoft Office for their official duties can apply internally to install the corresponding module from MS Office 2024 LTSC. Microsoft Access has apparently not completely disappeared either. The army has acquired separate licenses for certain fonts.

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