Tula Region Completes Software Migration Across Government, Expands Rollout to Municipal Agencies
The next phase of Russia's software import substitution initiative will focus on equipping municipal institutions with domestic software, while user training is expected to become one of the program's central priorities.
Authorities, municipalities, and subordinate public institutions across Russia's Tula Region continue migrating to domestically developed software. All employee workstations within the regional executive authorities and the regional government administration have already been fully equipped with Russian software, while more than 5,100 computers in public institutions have also completed the transition. The next step will see specialists assess the needs of district administrations and municipal organizations for Russian operating systems and office suites. To help employees adapt, the region has also launched dedicated online training courses on the Korporativny universitet (Corporate University) platform.
The federal import substitution monitoring program now includes all 89 Russian regions and 64 federal government agencies. That creates sustained demand for Russian operating systems, office suites, cybersecurity products, and centralized management tools, while giving software developers an opportunity to scale their products through government deployments. The shift away from foreign software is also expected to improve the stability of government operations and public services.
Preparing for the Next Stage
Following the regional government, Russian software will now be deployed across municipal administrations and subordinate organizations, including schools, cultural institutions, social service agencies, and other publicly funded organizations. In practice, the transition is expected to extend beyond installing operating systems and office suites, requiring the rollout of Russian identity management platforms, antivirus protection, and workstation administration tools.
User training will become the project's primary focus, even though employee productivity is likely to decline temporarily during the transition. There are also objective challenges, including compatibility issues between some Russian software products and existing applications or hardware. If the migration proves successful, however, the experience gained from a large-scale transition could help promote Russian operating systems and office software in international markets. Further development of domestic solutions also appears likely. The national project Data Economy and Digital Transformation of the State calls for continued expansion of Russian digital solutions and government information systems.
Every Region Is Migrating
Government agencies began migrating to Russian communication and office platforms as early as 2023, and regional governments have since built practical experience with large-scale deployments. By September 2024, for example, 1,364 workstations in Kaluga Region had been migrated to Red OS. The platform was integrated with the existing network infrastructure, email domain, and information security systems. That same year, ICL Services and Group Astra migrated up to 100,000 employees across government institutions in Tatarstan to Astra Linux. The Voronezh Region government also completed a migration to the same operating system.
Migration efforts continued through 2025 and 2026. Authorities in Leningrad Region selected Red OS together with the R7-Office office suite, while the Novgorod Region government migrated its Delo electronic document management system to the Russian Postgres Pro database management system. Meanwhile, Lipetsk Region moved both healthcare institution servers and executive government infrastructure to a Russian operating system, including 160 servers supporting the regional healthcare system.
More Domestic Solutions Ahead
For Tula Region, the deployment of Russian software across thousands of computers represents only part of the achievement. Equally significant is the program's expansion to municipal and subordinate institutions, together with a structured approach to user training.
Over the coming years, the region will likely continue expanding its portfolio of domestic technologies, ranging from operating systems and office suites to administration tools, backup platforms, cybersecurity solutions, and electronic document management systems. Ultimately, however, the key measure of success will be the share of day-to-day government operations that can be carried out entirely without relying on foreign software.
