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This is the second part of our interview with the Bundesheer (see here for the first). At the LibreOffice Conference 2025, you showcased the new LibreOffice features sponsored by the Austrian Armed Forces. How did that come about? From the very beginning, we clearly recognised the need to further develop LibreOffice. Before finalising our plans, we also examined how we could continue to develop the product. Ultimately, we issued a Europe-wide, open call for proposals to secure both support and development capacity for LibreOffice. The way we selected the product enhancements stemmed in part from this preliminary study, because we had identified specific import capabilities and compatibility requirements. That’s one major aspect: improving interoperability in line with our needs. The other focus was on improving LibreOffice based on ongoing user feedback and feedback regarding collaboration with external organizations. One example of this was the “Notes” bar in Impress. In the past, users had to edit notes in a separate notes view. We were told very early on that users wanted to be able to do this directly within the slide editing view. This is a very well-known enhancement that we sponsored, which – I think – works very well. In

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