Many government departments around the world are moving away from vendor lock-in by tech giants, and switching to free and open source software like LibreOffice. This helps with privacy, security, and digital sovereignty. One such example is the Austrian Military (Bundesheer), which has moved 16,000 PCs from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice. We talked to them, to find out why and how they did it… When did all of this start? When were the first decisions made? It began in 2020, with the trend toward running software increasingly in the cloud and less on-premises on devices within companies. At that time, we examined what guarantees existed for running software – specifically Microsoft Office – directly in the workplace without any cloud connection. So the review and preparation began in 2020. In late 2022 and early 2023, the decision was made to switch to LibreOffice. The goals were to ensure that data never leaves the company and that the Office applications can be used without external dependencies. Who made the decision? The decision was structured in such a way that our “corporate leadership” – that is, the Federal Ministry of Defence – could decide, based on the information compiled regarding future software