Take-Aways (AI)
  • Con­fe­de­ra­ti­on laun­ches CEBA pro­ject to intro­du­ce Micro­soft 365 in the fede­ral admi­ni­stra­ti­on after test pha­se, deci­ded on Febru­ary 15, 2023
  • Second pilot pha­se intro­du­ces M365 at the Fede­ral Office of Infor­ma­ti­on Tech­no­lo­gy and Tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons and in the Fede­ral Chancellery.
  • Around 40,000 work­sta­tions are to be con­ver­ted to Micro­soft 365 by the end of 2025.
  • Deployment poli­cy pro­hi­bits sto­rage of par­ti­cu­lar­ly sen­si­ti­ve or con­fi­den­ti­al data in the cloud; such data remains on premise.

On Febru­ary 15, 2023, fol­lo­wing a test pha­se, the fede­ral govern­ment deci­ded to use Micro­soft 365 as the new ver­si­on of Office in the fede­ral admi­ni­stra­ti­on (CEBA pro­ject for “Cloud Enab­ling Office Auto­ma­ti­on”, see here and at the Fede­ral Chan­cel­lery). The first pilot pha­se has now been com­ple­ted, and the second pilot pha­se is to fol­low. The aim is to con­vert 40,000 work­sta­tions by the end of 2025.

In the second pha­se, M365 will be intro­du­ced at the Fede­ral Office of Infor­ma­ti­on Tech­no­lo­gy and Tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons (FOITT) and in the Fede­ral Chancellery’s Digi­tal Trans­for­ma­ti­on and ICT Stee­ring divi­si­on (Media release).

The use of M365 is gover­ned by a usa­ge gui­de­line that pro­hi­bits the sto­rage of par­ti­cu­lar­ly sen­si­ti­ve data and con­fi­den­ti­al docu­ments (clas­si­fi­ca­ti­on hig­her than inter­nal) in the cloud (but only in M365 on pre­mi­se) as part of a vol­un­t­a­ry self-rest­ric­tion. The rele­vant legal con­side­ra­ti­ons can be found in the “Legal basis” paper dated Febru­ary 14, 2023 (see here).