🇫🇮 6. Finland – “Open First” Enters Government Policy
Finland’s newly elected government has declared that open-source solutions and open standards must now be prioritized in all public software procurement. That means a gradual but clear shift away from Microsoft wherever open alternatives are suitable.
This transition is more than philosophical—it’s about resilience. With native auditing, flexible APIs, and local control, Finland is making cloud computing security a built-in part of public infrastructure rather than an afterthought.
Finland’s embrace of open standards goes back to JUHTA guidelines in 2009, but the 2025 government programme turns recommendations into law. From Q1 2025 every central-government RFP must justify any deviation from open-source options—a reversal of the burden of proof that effectively dethrones proprietary incumbents. The Ministry of Finance underwrites the transition by joining the EU Public Procurement Data Space, giving agencies a central market to share code and evaluate bids. Several pilot cities—Oulu, Tampere, Lahti—have already migrated school servers to AlmaLinux and replaced Exchange with Dovecot-Postfix clusters, reporting 30 percent lower maintenance costs. A national repository, code.gov.fi, went live in April 2025 with 8 000 artefacts, from tax-calculation micro-services to a mobile COVID pass verifier. The “open first” statute dovetails with Finland’s cybersecurity doctrine: by mandating transparent code, it allows the National Cyber Security Centre to run static-analysis scans before software ever hits production, tightening cloud computing security at the supply-chain level. Opposition parties worry about skill gaps, but universities have responded with accelerated DevSecOps courses funded through the Recovery and Resilience Plan. Observers note that the switch is incremental—Windows desktops remain for now—but the legal ratchet only tightens: once an open alternative proves viable, agencies can no longer revert to closed systems without ministerial waiver. In the Nordic policy marketplace, Helsinki’s measured yet binding framework may prove more sustainable than Denmark’s headline-grabbing hard cut-off.
