Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Turns to Open Source Instead of Microsoft for Administrative Software

5,000 Employees Already Migrated

Finance Minister Heiko Geue (SPD) justified the move to the Deutsche Presse-Agentur with reference to independence and costs. "Dabei gehe es nicht nur darum, die digitale Souveränität zu erlangen, sondern auch mittel- und langfristig Geld einzusparen", sagte Geue. The software is operated on the in-house infrastructure of the state's IT service provider DVZ M-V GmbH.

Initial parts of the migration have already been completed: The transition from Microsoft SharePoint to new systems was carried out for the first 5,000 employees without friction and without data loss. In the long term, more than 50,000 public-sector employees are to work with the new systems.

European AI Models Instead of US Providers

At the same time, the state wants to avoid from the outset any dependency on US technology corporations such as Microsoft, OpenAI, Google, and Amazon when it comes to artificial intelligence. Instead, European language models are to be deployed. "Stattdessen wollen wir auf europäische Sprachmodelle wie Mistral aus Frankreich oder Tilde aus Lettland setzen", erklärte der CIO des Landes, Marco Anschütz.

The administration chatbot "Lea" is also being developed without US hyperscalers, the ministry said. Mecklenburg-Vorpommern does not, however, intend to abandon Microsoft completely in all areas. For example, Windows PCs in the administration are to remain in place for the time being.

Windows PCs to Remain for Now

Marco Anschütz, the Chief Information Officer responsible for IT and digitalization, made clear that a comprehensive switch from Windows to Linux is not imminent in the short term. "Es sei nicht geplant, die in der Verwaltung eingesetzten Windows-PCs kurzfristig durch Rechner mit dem offenen Betriebssystem Linux zu ersetzen. Dies habe derzeit noch keine Priorität", sagte Anschütz.

With this course change, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is positioning itself as the second northern German state to follow Schleswig-Holstein's open-source line. Observers see the cooperation as a signal that other federal states could follow suit in order to build their own digital sovereignty and become less dependent on individual software corporations.

The state government sees the transition as a double win: more control over its own IT landscape and, in the medium term, lower licensing costs. Since the systems are based on open standards, future vendor switches or expansions could be implemented more easily, the Ministry of Finance and Digitalization said.