Geneva votes for an open-source pilot: what it needs to survive

On 1 October 2026, Geneva’s parliament, the Grand Conseil, adopted motion M 3248 by 86 votes to 0, with no abstentions. The adopted text asks the cantonal government, the Conseil d’Etat, to run an open-source pilot in public administration, moving “two or three” administrative entities, including the Grand Conseil and its secretariat general, from proprietary to free software. A motion is a request, not a law: the government owes parliament a written report within six months, and whether the pilot ends in a decision depends on how it is designed.

This post covers what was voted, what is still open and what privatim’s revised cloud fact sheet adds. It compares the Danish digital ministry’s pilot, reported on 19 and 20 October 2026 as ended without evaluation, with the Federal Chancellery’s evaluated proof of concept, then sets out a pilot design and dates. Translations from French, German and Danish are ours, and facts are as of 23 October 2026.

What did Geneva’s Grand Conseil vote on 1 October 2026?

Four digital sovereignty motions were adopted on 1 October 2026 and referred to the Conseil d’Etat (session minutes), all without abstentions.

Motion	Tabled by	What it asks	Roll-call vote
M 3052	UDC	A strategy with the communes, local or national firms, and data kept only in data centres in Switzerland that pass nothing to third parties	86 to 0
M 3138	Greens	A plan to move all services to free software, gradually “but as quickly as possible”, and an annual report	82 to 4, all four against from the PLR
M 3170	PLR	Consider a viable, secure Swiss hosting solution and move to it as quickly as possible	85 to 0
M 3248	Commission des travaux	Continue the strategy, consider Genevan, Swiss or failing that European hosting, and run the pilot	86 to 0

The motion asks for a “projet pilote de désengagement des logiciels propriétaires vers des services de logiciels libres” in two or three entities of the “petit ou grand Etat” (small or large State). On our reading, that covers the cantonal administration and the wider public sector, including autonomous public bodies.

Geneva’s first digital sovereignty strategy of 7 July 2026 names reversibility among its principles and open source among its capabilities. On 28 September 2026, Geneva said it was the first Swiss canton to sign the UN Open Source Principles.

Is Geneva now leaving Microsoft?

Not by this vote. Under Article 148(1) LRGC, the Grand Conseil’s procedural law, the Conseil d’Etat must report to parliament in writing within six months, with reasons if it refuses. On our reading, that is by 1 April 2027, and the Grand Conseil then takes note. The other entities, the software, the budget, the dates and the evaluation method are still open.

Carole-Anne Kast, the Councillor of State for institutions and digital affairs (DIN), welcomed the motions (ATS via La Télé). At a committee hearing on 31 March 2026, as the report of 18 August 2026 summarises it, she said that no operator can currently supply equivalent services at the scale of the State of Geneva, notably for interoperability with the Confederation and intercantonal bodies, that leaving the Microsoft dependency is an objective over about five years, and that the Microsoft 365 choice is not fixed and could be reviewed if suitable alternatives appear. She added that an earlier internal reflection had considered a pilot in one or two entities, such as the communal affairs service (SAFCO), but not the Grand Conseil unless it asked. With M 3248, it has. A pilot is how the canton can find out whether a suitable alternative exists at its scale.

Katja Rupp, a director at OCSIN, the cantonal IT office, told the committee that nearly 50% of the administration’s databases are open source, as are more than 60% of its tools and 80% of its development frameworks. M 3138 states that teaching services in all primary schools and cycles d’orientation have run exclusively on free software for several years. The pilot tests the office workplace, not whether open source works.

What happened to the Danish digital ministry’s open-source pilot?

On 19 June 2025, Denmark’s Ministry of Digital Affairs announced a pilot replacing Office with Collabora, built on LibreOffice, inside the F2 case-management system for a group in its department. Tests would cover templates, the format for government cases, track changes, tables and Word conversion without layout changes, with a wider rollout expected if they went well.

Ingeniøren and Version2, not the ministry, reported on 19 October 2026 that the pilot ended “uden ordentlig evaluering” (without proper evaluation). ITWatch, citing another outlet, reported on 20 October 2026 that 38 staff tested Collabora for about half a year and that there are no plans to restart. The freely readable reports give no reason.

The ministry’s release of 19 June 2025 named what to test, but not a pass mark, an evaluation date or who would decide, and no evaluation has been published, so the stop left no public result: no case for a rollout and no list of fixes. That is a design gap, not a verdict on the software.

The Federal Chancellery shows the alternative. PoC BOSS, its proof of concept for open-source emergency office automation, has a user acceptance test report dated 30 June 2026: 172 people from all departments had access, and 73 rated 12 scenarios, the last one optional, on a scale of 1 to 6. The average was 5.4, and editing a document together scored 5.72 on openDesk, which bundles Nextcloud and Collabora Online among others. The Chancellery’s feasibility study finds open-source office automation viable in principle for core functions and calls the results a basis for further work, not yet production readiness (our post on the federal workplace).

On 22 October 2026, France’s Cour des comptes found user satisfaction broadly the same with free and proprietary tools, and said a transition needs significant support for staff (our summary).

What does privatim’s revised cloud fact sheet add?

The conference of Swiss data protection commissioners, privatim, lists Geneva’s commissioner, the PPDT, among its cantonal authorities. Its bureau adopted version 3.02 of its cloud fact sheet, the Merkblatt Cloud-spezifische Risiken und Massnahmen (aide-mémoire in French), on 2 October 2026 (French, German), and announced it on 13 October 2026. It replaces the version of 3 February 2022. It is guidance, not law: in Geneva, the cantonal data protection law (LIPAD) applies.

New in version 3.02:

• Sensitive data in international SaaS (section 2.3b). For public bodies, outsourcing particularly sensitive personal data, or data under a statutory duty of secrecy, to SaaS from large international providers “(comme Microsoft, Google, AWS et SAP)” is “pas admissible dans la plupart des cas” (not permissible in most cases) because of the unacceptable risk. A footnote cites privatim’s resolution of 18 November 2025.
• A legal opinion (section 2.2). The fact sheet now cites a 2023 University of Basel opinion: putting particularly sensitive personal data in a US provider’s cloud is a serious interference with informational self-determination, which a general legal power to use processors cannot justify.

Carried over from 2022: Swiss processing locations are preferred, with Swiss law and a Swiss forum in principle. Public bodies must show, case by case, what indispensable advantages a cloud service has over “une solution équivalente on premise” (an equivalent on-premises solution) and over lower-risk products. Top management (for an administration-wide rollout, the government) accepts the residual risk in writing, exit scenarios are kept in view from the start, and a data protection impact assessment (DPIA) is required, with a risk analysis and a plan of measures submitted to the competent data protection authority.

The fact sheet does not ask for pilots. But a pilot is how an administration builds that equivalent on-premises option, with costs and gaps written down, and tests an exit scenario instead of describing one.

How should a public administration run an open-source pilot?

An open-source pilot in public administration is a time-limited move of real teams and their work to open-source tools, with criteria, support and an evaluation date fixed in advance, so that it ends in a decision: scale up, extend or stop. It has eight parts:

• Real work, named. One entity (the motion names the Grand Conseil and its secretariat general) and one administrative service, with their processes, templates and outside exchanges listed. The secretariat still works in DOCX, the committee heard, so exchange comes first.
• Criteria before day one. The same everyday scenarios scored on a fixed scale, as in the Federal Chancellery’s test, first on today’s tools as a baseline and then in the pilot, with a pass mark and a named decider. Add operating criteria (availability, time to apply updates, a passed restore test) and the cost per user of both.
• Support from the first day. Named champions, training, an engineer on hand in the first weeks, and a log of what users ask, not only what breaks: the evaluation’s best evidence.
• One login. Single sign-on through the existing directory, with multi-factor authentication, before users arrive, so the pilot adds no password. Plan for leavers and break-glass accounts.
• Files moved and checked. Convert templates and test layout fidelity, starting from the Danish list. Compare counts between source and target, and choose ODF or DOCX for exchange.
• Run it as production. Restored backups, monitoring and planned updates from day one. The Chancellery’s study says productive use needs sound platform, operations, security, integration and support structures besides the software, and the PoC BOSS backend ran on a best-effort basis. A pilot run that way leaves the operating question open (why a restore is the proof).
• A date and a decision. A written, published evaluation on a fixed date, with three outcomes: scale up, extend with named fixes, or stop with reasons. Its owner should be an office, not a person, so the decision survives a change of minister or Councillor of State.
• The privatim file. Record costs, gaps and the exit scenario as the pilot runs, with the risk analysis and DPIA alongside: the comparison the fact sheet asks a public body to weigh a cloud service against.

Keep mail and telephony on separate tracks; start with files, editing, chat, meetings, a wiki and sign-in (sovereign workplace).

What to do, and by when

The dates below are our suggestion for Geneva’s pilot entities or any administration planning one. The only legal date is the Conseil d’Etat’s report, due by 1 April 2027 on our reading of Article 148(1) LRGC.

1. By 30 November 2026: name the entities, a pilot owner with authority to decide, and the users.
2. By 31 December 2026: write the scenarios, the scale, the pass mark and the operating criteria, score today’s tools as the baseline, and fix the evaluation date.
3. By 31 January 2027: set up sign-in and the file plan, convert the templates, and start the privatim file (risk analysis and DPIA).
4. By 1 April 2027: have the pilot running on real work.
5. For at least three months: run with support and a log, and complete a restore test before the evaluation.
6. On the evaluation date: publish the result and the decision (scale up, extend or stop), with the exit scenario on file.

How Pilae fits

A pilot is a small production, and our migration method runs one after the inventory and a written, fixed-price plan. We operate open-source apps on your premises or on dedicated machines in Pilae Cloud, and for a public body the contract names Switzerland as the only data location.

• A pilot inside a plan. One team moves first, and its feedback adjusts the mappings, training and runbook before a parallel run and cutover (migration).
• Users supported from the first week. Teams move department by department, with training material and engineers on hand for the first weeks. Collabora Online opens and saves Word, Excel and PowerPoint formats in the browser (sovereign workplace).
• One login and checked files. Single sign-on through Keycloak or your Entra ID, set up before users arrive, with break-glass accounts tested (identity), and data counts compared between source and target in a report (migration).
• Run as production from day one. Fixed-price onboarding puts one workload live with single sign-on and daily encrypted backups, restored once before sign-off and recorded in the console (onboarding). On the Enterprise plan, under managed operations, an engineer then restores your backups every month and records the result (backups).
• A way out in writing. A written exit plan at handover, and a full export of your data and configuration in open formats (exit plan).

We do not operate mail, so mail stays a separate track (Microsoft 365 alternative). Every contract includes an nLPD data processing agreement, we supply the data flows, security measures, sub-processors and retention your impact assessment needs (for DPOs), and we work with your data protection officer on cantonal law (public sector). Run and supported properly, open source holds up on an administration’s own work, and a pilot built to decide is how you show it. If you are preparing a pilot, talk to an engineer.

This post is general information, not legal advice. For the official texts, read motion M 3248 and privatim’s cloud fact sheet.