This comes at a time when in any case many of the roughly 25,000 government, state and subordinate agencies' employees' workstations are being transferred to a new, centrally managed system, overseen by the State IT Center (RIT), including a wholesale transfer to the cloud.

RIT says there are no plans to totally abandon Microsoft — whose Microsoft365 cloud platform is being used by the Estonian state — and the other big-name providers, simply that alternatives are being trialed. Also, a pan-EU decision may necessitate the move away from the U.S. firms.

EU-US relations key

The pilot project starts this fall, RIT director Ergo Tars said. "If, for example, it were to happen that Europe and the U.S., for some reason — which is unlikely, but still — if a decision were made in the European Union that American products are no longer trusted, then what situation would we be in," Tars explained.

"In that case there would not be much difference whether it is Microsoft, Amazon or Google. Then we would have to look purely at Europe-based products," Tars noted.

RIT is responsible for managing sensitive government and government agency computer workstations, which in any case are transferring over to cloud-based solutions, at the moment mainly using Microsoft 365 components.

The center's head, Ergo Tars, said discussions had taken place over the past year with European counterparts about the continent's dependence on U.S. IT infrastructure and whether it would be possible to use alternatives.

The issues include cost, and risks relating to servers holding Estonian data being out-of-country.

At present, Tars said, there is no magic bullet solution, adding that does not mean development is not quietly under way. Possible real risks are related to Microsoft outages, for instance, although their likelihood is not particularly high, Tars said.

"We know that there have always been outages in services and there always will be. Some critical components, for example authentication — if the system is built so that the authentication mechanism exists on both sides, in the cloud and on the ground, then it is also easier to bring that backup option into operation in the event of long-term outages," Tars said.

RIT puts the annual cost of one government agency computer workstation at about €2,000 per user. Of this, Tars said, around €400 goes to Microsoft, in license and consultancy fees. This translates to around €6 million per year for the roughly 15,000 workstations in question.

That said, Tars noted using open-source software would likely not bring major savings. A support provider would certainly have to be found for the products, which costs money too, while user management would become more complex and involved – meaning support would need to be greater.

Many state and government employees will have been using Microsoft products and those from the other majors all their working lives and perhaps even longer, making change potentially difficult: This is also one of the aspects the analysis will look at, by testing out alternative software and how easy it is to use.

"There are two aspects to this. One is the tech aspect — how to build the service. The other is user-friendliness. How, in our context, a public servant can cope with that workstation in a situation where there is not a single application they have become familiar with for 20 or 30 years, like Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Word and so on. That learning curve is one important point in this test," Tars said.

Tars said it was still unclear what the test alternative would be, but it could involve LibreOffice or OpenOffice with a Linux distribution, meaning Windows could not be used. He noted that a European solution was under development and might be mature enough for testing in the second half of the year, but added that there was currently no comprehensive replacement for U.S. technology companies, with Microsoft remaining the most complete workplace solution.

Tars: Moving to the cloud will not bring savings

A little over 7,000 government and state workstation users have been moved to the cloud-based service so far.

According to Tars, moving workstations to the cloud will not bring significant financial savings for the state, as alternative solutions still have to be maintained to ensure continuity of operations.

"We have to consider emergency situations. If something happens with cloud technologies, how do we cope then. In fact, some critical components are built in a hybrid way. We have duplicated some things on the ground and some things are in the cloud," Tars said to this.

Tars added that if cloud technology were used fully, it would be cheaper than on-premises solutions, as on-premises setups require additional server resources.

RIT itself is also to continue moving state computer workstations to a centrally managed service. "We are transferring all those users who are currently our clients and who, according to the coalition agreement and a decision of the government of the republic, should join RIT's computer workstation service next year," Tars said.

Tars said the benefits included easier file sharing through Microsoft collaboration tools, continuous updates, and regular security patching via the cloud-based service.

This means all ministries and their subordinate agencies are due to join the RIT system managed, with only the ministries with the highest degrees of confidentiality: The Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of the Interior and part of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to remain outside, thanks to their higher security requirements.

Currently, state agency Statistics Estonia is in the process of joining the system, to be followed immediately by the Social Insurance Board (SKA), then the Ministry of Regional Affairs and Agriculture and its subordinate agencies, such as the Agriculture and Food Board (PTA), as well as the Ministry of Climate and its subordinate agency the Environmental Board (Keskkonnaamet).

At present, 53 institutions and around 8,500 workstations are using RIT's services.

By the end of the year, Tars said, RIT could be managing 12,500 workstations, while over two years, 15,000 out of the government sector's current 25,000 workstations could move to RIT.

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