Schleswig-Holstein Is Treating Open Source as Public-Sector Infrastructure

Schleswig-Holstein is replacing proprietary software with open-source alternatives across its public administration. In an official interview published by Capgemini, the German state’s digitalization minister describes the program as a strategy for digital sovereignty: retaining the knowledge and capacity to understand, manage and develop the systems on which government depends. The migration treats software choices as public-infrastructure decisions rather than isolated technology purchases.

Digital Sovereignty Requires Operating Control

Public institutions depend on digital workplaces, communications and stored information to perform their responsibilities. If those systems cannot be understood or changed without a single supplier, technical dependence can limit administrative freedom. Open standards and source code can widen the field of providers, but only when institutions also retain the skills to operate and improve them.

Schleswig-Holstein’s approach joins political authority with practical migration. The state introduced a digitally sovereign workplace for around 30,000 public-sector employees in April 2024. This created an operating base from which individual proprietary services could be replaced.

Migration Is Measured in Workplaces and Data

The move from Microsoft Exchange and Outlook to Open-Xchange and Thunderbird covered more than 44,000 mailboxes and 110 million emails and calendar entries. That scale shows why digital sovereignty is an implementation challenge. Information must be transferred accurately, services must remain available and employees must be able to work through the change.

Replacing products does not by itself create lasting independence. The state also needs internal expertise, workable support arrangements and a diverse supplier ecosystem. Without those capabilities, dependence could shift from one platform to another.

Schleswig-Holstein has moved beyond a policy statement by migrating core administrative systems. Its longer-term achievement will be the ability to maintain those systems, shape future changes and preserve dependable public operations.