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"gewg_" writes:

from the futureproof-standards-instead-of-moving-targets dept.

The European Union's interoperability page reports [europa.eu]

The Italian military is transitioning to LibreOffice and the [OpenDocument] Format (ODF). The Ministry of Defense will over the next year-and-a-half install this suite of office productivity tools on some 150,000 PC workstations--making it Europe's second largest LibreOffice implementation. The switch was announced on 15 September by the LibreItalia Association [libreitalia.it].

The migration project will begin in October and is foreseen to be completed at the end of 2016.

  It's the law

Italy's Agency for the Digitalization of the Public Sector (AGID) [...] writes that the switch to LibreOffice is a consequence of a June 2012 law, which says that free and open source [software] should be the default option for the country's public administrations.

The Ministry of Defence is the first central government organisation to switch to an open source office productivity suite. However, there are many regions, provinces and city administrations in Italy that use LibreOffice, including the Regione Emilia Romagna, the provinces of Perugia, Cremona, Macerata, Bolzano, and Trento, [as well as] the cities of Bologna, Piacenza, and Reggio Emilia.

[...]The largest European public administration using free software office suites is the French Interior Ministry [europa.eu], with some 240,000 desktops. In France, many ministries use open source office suites such as LibreOffice.

Original Submission