Reports say Denmark's plan to replace Microsoft Office has collapsed. But what was actually halted was not a government-wide move away from Microsoft. It was a trial of the open-source office suite Collabora involving 38 staff at the Ministry of Digitalisation. According to a report by the Danish technology outlet Ingeniøren in October 2026, the trial ended without the formal evaluation that had been planned. Meanwhile, Statens IT, which manages IT services for government agencies, is running a separate project called "SIA Open" to roll out work PCs that do not depend on Microsoft products. Denmark has not abandoned its efforts to move away from Microsoft altogether.
The episode became widely known after TechSpot reported that "Denmark gives up replacing Microsoft Office, for now". However, the body of that article also deals with a limited trial inside the ministry. As early as summer 2025, the ministry had explained that it had no plan to phase out Microsoft products across the whole ministry. What actually began was a trial of an Office alternative inside an existing case-management system. Its purpose and scope differ from those of SIA Open, which began in December 2025.
A 38-person Collabora trial, plagued by Word compatibility problems
On June 19, 2025, the Ministry of Digitalisation began a trial of Collabora built into its case-management system, F2. F2 was developed by the Danish software company cBrain and is used for drafting and editing administrative documents, case management and more. According to the ministry's official announcement, the trial was to replace Microsoft Office inside F2 with Collabora, which is based on LibreOffice, and test whether it could be used without disrupting work. Thirty-eight staff at the ministry's main office took part, and if the trial succeeded, it could have been extended to other staff in the ministry.
According to cBrain's announcement, the items to be tested included compatibility with government document templates, fidelity of formatting, tracked-changes management, table editing and two-way conversion with Microsoft Word formats. These functions are essential for producing administrative documents, and a tool that merely lets users type text would not be an adequate substitute. The European Commission's Open Source Observatory (OSOR) reported that the ministry had also acknowledged it might temporarily revert to Microsoft products if serious problems arose. In other words, a full migration was never a foregone conclusion; the trial was meant to determine whether the software could handle real work.
Compatibility problems emerged almost immediately. According to internal emails that Ingeniøren obtained through a freedom-of-information request, as reported by TechSpot, hidden styles in Word templates caused trouble within an hour of the trial starting. The Georgia font used by the templates was also unavailable in Collabora, and even after cBrain added it, problems persisted: some text turned bold unintentionally and unwanted line breaks were inserted. Other reported issues included a file sent from the Ministry of Finance displaying as blank, and pressing Ctrl+P printing the entire window rather than the document.
These glitches highlight how difficult it is to replace an entrenched Microsoft Office with other software. At the ministry, document workflows were built around Word templates, and detailed specifications for formatting and fonts were part of the job. Simply being able to open a document was not enough; editing, printing and exchanging files with other ministries all had to produce the same results as before. The case of the Finance Ministry's file failing to open properly suggests that compatibility problems can affect not only internal work but also document exchange between government bodies.
Technically, F2 itself is not built to depend entirely on Microsoft Office. According to cBrain, F2 separates document data from editing tools, so different editing programs can be used side by side. But being able to switch editors is not the same as having existing documents and work procedures run without problems. In this trial, the alternative software could be embedded in the system, but ensuring the compatibility that real administrative work demands proved to be the hard part.
The results were supposed to be reviewed at an evaluation workshop scheduled for October 2025. Internal memos reportedly envisioned four possible conclusions, ranging from full migration to a judgment that it was still too early for practical use. However, the workshop was never held, and participating staff continued using Collabora into 2026. The trial was later halted, and it has been reported that no one at the ministry now uses Collabora and there are no plans to resume it.
A spokesperson for the current Ministry of Research, Education and Digitalisation also acknowledged to Ingeniøren that the planned evaluation had not taken place. However, published reports do not confirm the date on which the trial was formally ended or who decided to stop it. It would therefore be inappropriate to interpret the outcome as a formal determination that Collabora cannot be used for government work. What can be confirmed is that multiple compatibility problems were reported and that the trial ended without the planned evaluation.
Why did reports of Microsoft being scrapped ministry-wide spread?
To understand this halt, it is necessary to distinguish between the initial reports that circulated in June 2025 and the trial that actually began. On June 9 of that year, the Danish newspaper Politiken reported that then Minister for Digitalisation Caroline Stage planned to phase out Microsoft products within the ministry. The report prompted a flood of inquiries from domestic and foreign media and companies, and over the summer ministry staff explained that there was no plan to phase out Microsoft across the whole ministry.
The initial reports said that half of the staff would move away from Microsoft products between June and August 2025, with the remainder following between September and November. XenoSpectrum also described this plan in an article on June 28, 2025. But what actually began on the 19th of that month was a limited trial in which 38 staff tested Collabora inside F2. Minister Stage also described it at the time as a "first step" toward strengthening the government's digital sovereignty, and explained that it did not mean an immediate, wholesale removal of Microsoft products.
The sequence of events from the start of the trial to the revelation of its halt is as follows.
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| June 9, 2025 | Politiken reports on the Ministry of Digitalisation's plan to phase out Microsoft products. Inquiries pour in from the next day |
| June 19, 2025 | The ministry begins the Collabora trial inside F2, involving 38 staff |
| Summer 2025 | The ministry explains that it has no plan to phase out Microsoft products across the whole ministry |
| October 2025 | An evaluation workshop for the Collabora trial is scheduled but not held |
| December 1, 2025 | Ingeniøren reports that Minister Stage has decided to continue the trial |
| December 15, 2025 | The director of the Road Traffic Authority begins using an SIA Open work PC |
| February 26, 2026 | A general election in Denmark is announced |
| March 24, 2026 | The Danish general election is held |
| June 3, 2026 | The third Frederiksen government takes office, and responsibility for digital administration is merged with research and education |
| October 19–20, 2026 | Version2 and Ingeniøren report that the Collabora trial has been halted and that no evaluation was conducted |
What matters in this timeline is the gap of about five months between October 2025, when the evaluation workshop was scheduled, and the general election in March 2026. TechSpot links the formation of a new government after the election to the end of the trial, but the trial had been continuing without its planned evaluation since before the election. Whether there was a causal link between the two cannot be determined from public information.
In addition, Mette Frederiksen continues as prime minister in the new cabinet formed on June 3, 2026. According to an announcement from the Danish Prime Minister's Office, the composition of the coalition government changed, and digital administration came under the Ministry of Research, Education and Digitalisation headed by Christina Egelund. Egelund had previously also stood in as digitalisation minister while Stage was on parental leave. Even given these circumstances, it cannot be said that the government reshuffle directly caused the halt of the Collabora trial.
SIA Open: work PCs without Word or Outlook, available to 166 agencies from February 2027
Separately from the ministry's Collabora trial, the Danish government is working to build a work environment that does not depend on Microsoft products. Central to this is "SIA Open" from Statens IT, which provides IT services to government agencies. On December 15, 2025, Stefan Jøker Søsted, director of the Road Traffic Authority, switched to a work PC without Microsoft Word, Outlook and other software, becoming the project's first user. According to the Road Traffic Authority's official announcement, it is the first case of a government agency adopting Statens IT's open-source PCs.
Søsted has explained that the initiative is not aimed at cutting ties with Microsoft entirely, but is a trial to gain knowledge about alternative work environments. For that reason, the authority has not cancelled its Microsoft licences for now. The aim is to be able to move to another option without depending on a single vendor if prices or terms eventually reach unacceptable levels. Ingeniøren also reported in September 2025 that Statens IT was working on a plan to expand work PCs independent of Microsoft products to several thousand users.
Unlike the Collabora trial, which replaced only document-editing software inside the ministry, SIA Open is an effort to build the work PC environment itself from open-source software. According to OSOR's report published on October 15, 2026, the Road Traffic Authority still has fewer than 10 users, but early feedback on the trial is relatively positive. Other government agencies have also expressed interest in participating, and Statens IT is limiting participating agencies for the time being to confirm operational stability.
The key upcoming milestone is February 2027. According to Peder Wiese, chief technology officer (CTO) of Statens IT, once the third version of SIA Open is released that month, the 166 government agencies to which the organisation provides services are expected to be able to order SIA Open. If that happens, it would grow from a trial environment used by a few agencies into a service that government agencies can choose through a shared IT platform. However, it has not been decided that all 166 agencies will actually adopt it.
Japan also has a mechanism for providing a shared work environment to government bodies. The Digital Agency's Government Solution Service (GSS) provides work PCs, networks and a security environment used in common by staff of ministries and agencies. According to the Digital Agency's announcement, as of February 2026 it was used by 18 organisations and about 53,000 people, and is expected to expand to about 280,000 people in the future. While GSS and SIA Open differ in purpose and software configuration, they share the approach of offering a work environment that each ministry had built separately as a common government IT platform.
The differences between the two projects are as follows.
| Item | Ministry of Digitalisation's Collabora trial | Statens IT's SIA Open |
|---|---|---|
| Implementing bodies | Ministry of Digitalisation, cBrain | Statens IT, Road Traffic Authority |
| What is replaced | Microsoft Office inside F2 | The software environment of work PCs, including Word and Outlook |
| Trial size | 38 staff at the ministry's main office | Fewer than 10 at the Road Traffic Authority |
| Start date | June 19, 2025 | December 15, 2025 |
| Scope of expansion | Within the Ministry of Digitalisation | 166 agencies supported by Statens IT |
| Microsoft licences | Cancelling ministry-wide contracts not in scope | Not cancelled for now |
| Status as of October 2026 | Ended without a formal evaluation | Trial continuing |
| Next milestone | Whether results are published or the trial resumes | Release of version 3 and start of orders in February 2027 |
The two differ not only in who runs them but also in technical scope and how they would be expanded. The Collabora trial tried to replace document-editing software inside an existing business system, whereas SIA Open creates an alternative for the PC environment for government agencies itself. However, SIA Open is also still at a small trial stage, and it is not possible at present to judge which approach is better.
Microsoft licence spending of more than ¥11.8 billion a year in the background
Rising licence costs are part of the background to Denmark's search for alternatives to Microsoft products. According to materials submitted by the Danish Ministry of Finance to parliament, state spending on Microsoft-related software, cloud and server infrastructure under the central joint procurement agreement rose from DKK 439.9 million in 2023 to DKK 527.3 million in 2024. That is an increase of about 20%, and the 2024 spending is equivalent to about ¥12.4 billion. Multiple factors could be behind the increase, including a larger number of licences, changes in the products purchased and higher unit prices.
A similar trend can be seen in municipalities. According to data Altinget collected from municipalities, spending on Microsoft user and server licences rose about 70%, from at least DKK 380 million (about ¥9 billion) in 2020 to at least DKK 646 million (about ¥15.2 billion) in 2025. These figures are total spending and do not mean that the unit price of licences itself rose 70%. Even so, it is clear that dependence on Microsoft products translates directly into a financial burden for public bodies.
In 2025, the Danish government also signed a new five-year joint procurement agreement that includes continued use of Microsoft products. The contract is reported as being worth about DKK 4.2 billion (about ¥99 billion), but a check of government procurement records shows that DKK 4.251 billion is the estimate at the tendering stage, while the awarded contract value actually published, including options, is about DKK 3.799 billion (about ¥89.5 billion). The contractor is Atea A/S, and the scope includes supply of standard software licences and maintenance and additional procurement of Microsoft products held by the government. The Danish Agency for Public Finance and Management has also announced that the contract runs until March 31, 2030.
Note: Yen conversions use the European Central Bank's reference rate of October 26, 2026 (about ¥23.57 per krone).
The government has a long-term contract for continued use of existing Microsoft products while also developing an open-source alternative environment, but the two are not necessarily contradictory. The idea is to maintain current administrative operations while securing alternatives that can actually be used, in preparation for the next contract renewal or negotiations over procurement terms. However, it has not yet been demonstrated how much SIA Open would reduce licence spending. A comparison would need to include migration costs, staff training, ensuring compatibility with existing systems and the cost of operation and maintenance.
Has Denmark's move away from Microsoft gone into reverse?
There is room to see these developments as evidence that Denmark's policy of moving away from Microsoft has retreated. The ministry's Collabora trial ended without a formal evaluation, and no plans to resume it have been indicated. SIA Open, a separate initiative, remained a small trial of fewer than 10 people as of October 2026, and Microsoft licence contracts continue. Moreover, the reorganisation of the government's administrative bodies has changed the political backing for the effort that existed in 2025.
Given this, there is some basis for the assessment that the move away from Microsoft products has not progressed as much as initially hoped. At the least, the plan that circulated in June 2025, for the entire Ministry of Digitalisation to abandon Microsoft within the year, did not materialise. It is also unclear at this stage whether SIA Open will spread across government agencies. Because it changes the foundation that government bodies use for daily work, it is not enough for the alternative software simply to run; document compatibility, security and operational stability must also be confirmed.
On the other hand, the end of the 38-person Collabora trial does not justify concluding that the Danish government as a whole has given up on moving away from Microsoft. SIA Open is an independent project managed by a different organisation, and an open-source work environment is actually in use at the Road Traffic Authority. Statens IT is also preparing to expand the service toward February 2027, and the approach of developing alternatives in parallel with the existing Microsoft environment remains in place. Whether that leads to large-scale adoption or cost reductions will have to be judged by future results.
The key factors to watch are the release of SIA Open's third version in February 2027 and the orders government agencies place afterwards. Even if the third version is released as planned, it cannot be said to have taken hold as an option available across government unless orders actually come in from the 166 agencies. Conversely, if adoption proceeds at multiple agencies and concrete results are confirmed on compatibility with existing systems and operating costs, Denmark's effort would enter a new phase. If the Ministry of Research, Education and Digitalisation publishes the evaluation results of the Collabora trial or resumes it, the assessment of this halt would also need to be revisited.
What the Danish case highlights is the difference between introducing alternatives to Microsoft products and building a system in which government bodies can continue operating without depending on a particular vendor. In the 38-person trial, document compatibility was a major obstacle, and the trial did not even reach a formal evaluation. SIA Open, meanwhile, aims to let agencies choose an alternative environment through the state's shared IT platform, but its practicality and economic benefits have not yet been sufficiently verified. Whether Denmark can truly reduce its dependence on Microsoft will become clear through future adoption and operating results.