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Why is the Bavarian government claiming they used Microsoft software a decade before the company existed?
The Digital Strategy Conflict in Bavaria
The state government of Bavaria is currently pursuing a controversial IT strategy that diverges significantly from national and European trends toward digital sovereignty. While the administration aims to consolidate its digital infrastructure by migrating all state and municipal authorities to Microsoft 365, this decision has sparked intense debate regarding data privacy, vendor lock-in, and fiscal responsibility.
This “cloud-first” approach with a US-based provider contrasts sharply with other German states. For instance, Schleswig-Holstein is actively transitioning its administration to open-source alternatives like LibreOffice and Open-Xchange. This pivot prioritizes the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and reduces dependency on single-vendor proprietary ecosystems. Critics argue that Bavaria’s insistence on a multi-billion euro Microsoft contract ignores these sovereignty concerns and potential GDPR compliance hurdles inherent in exporting public data to US-controlled cloud environments.
The Historical Inaccuracy in Parliament
The conflict escalated during a January 2026 session of the Bavarian State Parliament. Finance Minister Albert Füracker (CSU), defending the Microsoft consolidation plan against opposition scrutiny, attempted to establish a historical precedent for the state’s technology usage. In his rebuttal, he stated that Bavaria has utilized Microsoft products and open-source software “since the 1960s.”
This statement is factually impossible and suggests a significant gap in technical literacy at the executive level. Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975, and the company did not have a significant European presence until the introduction of the IBM PC and MS-DOS in the early 1980s. Furthermore, while software code sharing existed in academia earlier, the specific term “open source” was not coined and formally adopted by the Open Source Initiative until 1998.
Implications for Digital Policy
The Minister’s assertion that the state has a sixty-year history with these technologies is more than a rhetorical slip; it undermines the credibility of the government’s IT decision-making process. If the rationale for a billion-euro investment is built upon a fundamental misunderstanding of the technological timeline, it raises valid questions about the rigour of the due diligence performed regarding the contract.
The opposition’s concern is that the Bavarian administration is deepening a dependency on a single vendor without adequately assessing the alternatives that offer greater control over data. By dismissing the viability of open-source solutions—which strictly did not exist as a defined market category in the 1960s—the government risks isolating itself from the broader European movement toward open, interoperable, and sovereign administrative IT infrastructure.