Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is going on the offensive in digital policy and is focusing on independence. As the Ministry of Finance and Digitalization announced, the country is gradually separating itself from the software of large tech companies such as Microsoft. Instead, a nationwide platform will be built on an open source basis. It’s not just about achieving digital sovereignty, but also about saving money in the medium and long term, said Finance Minister Heiko Geue (SPD).
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Nextcloud instead of SharePoint: The smooth transition
The focus of the new strategy is the introduction of the open-source online platform Nextcloud, developed in Germany, with which you can securely store and share files, chat together in teams and hold video conferences without losing control of your own data to third-party providers. The previous switch from Microsoft SharePoint has already been completed smoothly and without data loss for the first 5,000 employees, reports Marco Anschütz, who is responsible for IT and digitalization in the state as Chief Information Officer (CIO).
In the medium term, the project is much larger: over 50,000 employees in the public sector – from ministries to municipal institutions – will work with the system in the future. The software is operated on its own infrastructure by the state-owned IT service provider DVZ MV GmbH.
Technological alliance in the north
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is not going this route alone. As early as October 2025, the state concluded a cooperation agreement with Schleswig-Holstein, which is considered a nationwide pioneer in switching to open source software. Together, the two federal states form a technological alliance in the north. The infrastructures are coordinated with one another in order to increase IT security and to protect against mutual emergency scenarios.
When it comes to artificial intelligence (AI), Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is trying to avoid dependence on US tech giants such as Microsoft, OpenAI, Google or Amazon from the outset. When developing the administrative chatbot “Lea”, US hyperscalers were deliberately avoided. “Instead, we want to rely on European language models such as Mistral from France or Tilde from Latvia,” says Anschütz.
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Not a complete abandonment of Microsoft
However, foregoing Microsoft solutions in the areas of cloud and AI does not mean that Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania will completely turn its back on the world’s largest software company. There are no plans to replace the Windows PCs used in administration with computers running the open Linux operating system in the short term. This is not currently a priority, emphasizes Anschütz.
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