Greece: municipality of Pilea-Hortiatis migrating to LibreOffice

Joinup reports that the Greek municipality of Pilea-Hortiatis, just east of Thessaloniki, is migrating all of its PCs to LibreOffice with the assistance of Greeklug, the Greek Linux User Group. Greeklug explains in a statement (in Greek) published at the end of March that it has completed the migration of 91 PCs from a proprietary office suite, with 45 still to be done.

The group reckons that replacing the previous proprietary office suite with LibreOffice will help the local authority save some €70,000 this year alone.

According to Greeklug Chair Kostas Mousafiris, the primary reason for the switch to LibreOffice was “to escape from the usual IT vendor lock-in. The move to LibreOffice obviously lightens this burden. The move is also relatively easy.”

Mousafiris says that the group discussed the migration at length with politicians and local IT staff. “We convinced them that LibreOffice would meet all their needs, it would ensure the use of open standards with all the benefits of interoperability, safety of the data and guaranteed accessibility in the future. And it would save them significant amounts of money.”

At this rate, will any European local authorities and/or other public sector bodies (apart from those in the UK, of course. Ed.) still be using MS Office in 5 years time?