Germany has decided: Microsoft document formats have no place in government. Deadline: 2027–2028. The Microsoft formats are simply not compatible with an open and transparent public sector. However, this is about more than file formats. It’s about control, resilience, and sovereignty in public digital infrastructure.
After various attempts, Germany will finally begin moving away from Microsoft’s vendor lock-in. And this time there is a date set. All German government institutions are expected to transition away from Word, Excel, and PowerPoint file formats. Ambitious, to say the least.
Instead, the German government will move toward the Open Document Format (ODF), known from applications such as LibreOffice and OpenOffice. These are open-source alternatives to the Redmond-based office suite. Although Microsoft Office does support ODF, there are still compatibility and formatting quirks that make Office 365 less desirable in this context.
Like France, Denmark, and several other European countries, Germany has officially committed to reducing its dependence on US-based tech products, as US laws may affect the continuity and autonomy of government services.
Risks could include the disruption of cloud services, as well as potential access to sensitive governmental data stored on external platforms.
Sources:
- A helpful report by House of El: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7jYaEJ8LFU
- A LibreOffice article: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/03/20/big-news-germany-has-just-made-odf-mandatory/