The municipalities of Copenhagen and Aarhus are choosing open source alternatives to reduce their reliance on proprietary software and cloud infrastructure. While Aarhus has been pushing to increase the use of open source software since 2013. The current transition is motivated by geopolitical concerns and increasing expenses.
Geopolitical uncertainty and rising costs
In Copenhagen, Henrik Appel Espersen from the audit committee warns that in a worst-case scenario, U.S. control could block access to email and IT systems. Aarhus has expressed similar uneasiness, also citing concerns about the transfer of municipal data to the United States.
“The problem isn’t the solutions themselves; it’s the bundling, the licensing, the monopoly, and the GDPR concerns.” - explains Bo Fristed, Head of Aarhus Municipality's department for Innovation, Technology, and Creativity.
Additionally, increasing costs are a major factor. Spending on proprietary services by Danish municipalities rose sharply: from DKK 313 million in 2018 to DKK 538 million in 2023.
“In the city of Aarhus, we have around 700 different IT systems, and many still depend on Microsoft formats. We’re now identifying those dependencies and working with vendors to resolve them. We've also made a clear decision not to purchase any new systems that require Microsoft products.” - says Bo.
Aarhus has already migrated 60 systems to the German provider, Hetzner. The switch reduced operational costs from about DKK 800,000 per year to around DKK 225,000.
“The biggest challenges have not been technical; they’ve been cultural. Whenever you introduce change, people tend to fall back and say, ‘Oh no.’ Technically, though, we had no major issues; we used Kubernetes, which made migration easy and turned the process into a valuable exercise to optimize our systems for future transitions.”
Meanwhile, Copenhagen is actively searching for European open source alternatives.
Growing trend in public administration
The developments in Copenhagen and Aarhus are not isolated. The Danish Ministry for Digital Affairs will begin transitioning to open-source software next month, moving half of its employees to LibreOffice. A full migration is planned by the end of the year, as part of a four-year initiative to strengthen digital sovereignty.
Across Europe, public administrations are increasingly choosing open source alternatives and abandoning proprietary software.
Back in 2022, Denmark’s Data Protection Agency (DPA) banned the use of Google Workspace in public institutions. That same year, the Helsingør municipality announced plans to eliminate 8,000 Chromebooks from its schools before the new academic year.
“Thirteen years ago, we moved all our public library computers to open source, Ubuntu and LibreOffice. We’ve had zero complaints from citizens. It looks the same, the buttons are in the same place, and it works. It’s totally doable, we just need to show it to people.” - elaborates Bo Fristed
In France, the Ministry of Education banned free versions of Microsoft Office 365 and Google Workspace in schools, because of data protection concerns.
In 2024, Germany’s northern state of Schleswig-Holstein launched one of the most extensive transitions yet. The state is phasing out Microsoft products across its entire public administration, replacing Windows and Office on more than 30,000 computers with open source alternatives like Linux and LibreOffice. Microsoft’s SharePoint and Exchange/Outlook are being swapped out for NextCloud, Open-Xchange with Thunderbird, and the Univention AD-Connector. A custom-built, open source-based directory service is in the works, alongside a new telephony system to replace Telekom-Flexport.
A bright future for open source
In the future, the Municipality of Aarhus is looking to connect its existing systems to open source solutions to avoid being locked into proprietary software.
“We aim to have 12,000 employees using Microsoft and 12,000 using open source and still be able to book the same meeting room or share mailing lists. That’s why we’re building a proxy that bridges both systems. It also serves as an emergency plan, so if the U.S. ever cuts access to Microsoft platforms, we can move everyone instantly.” says Bo Fristed
Even on national level, there are interesting collaborations and developments for open source in public institutions.
“We now have 21 municipalities working on an open source platform for kids. At the same time, we’re developing a new AI platform using open source for all public organisations, fully GDPR-compliant and capable of handling sensitive and classified information.”