Over the past few months, the French government has stepped up its efforts to develop and deploy its technology for government officials. The country has, arguably, emerged as a leader in pursuing Europe’s growing digital sovereignty, which aims to cut some of its reliance on US-based technology over concerns about data security, the unpredictability of the Trump administration and changing prices. French Budget Minister David Amiel recently called on the state to “break free” from American systems and use those it can control.
“We’re not just explaining what we want to do,” Stéphanie Scherr, the head of DINUM, France’s digital transformation ministry, tells WIRED over a call on the country’s video-calling platform Visio. “We have already done that in some cases.” So far, more than 40,000 French government employees have started using home video platforms, while the rest will move away from Zoom, Microsoft Teams and others by 2027. “We’re confident enough to use it every day and we’re not just relying on an actor telling us you have to use my video conference,” says Shire.
In France’s central government agencies and vast civil service, officials are planning to move to as many French, European and open source technology options as possible in the coming years. Scherer says it is important for the French government to have control over the technology it is using, with the data being stored locally in the country, not overseas.
As part of this, DINUM is developing a set of productivity tools, collectively called “LaSuite”, through at least 2023. As well as Visio, it includes instant messaging app Tchap, Messaging instead of Gmail or Outlook, Feders for documents and file sharing, plus text editing software Docs and Grist for spreadsheets. Some software is still in beta and has not yet been made fully available to the French authorities. However, Shayer says TeaChap already has 420,000 active users, with 20,000 civil servants adopting it every month.
“We’re based on open source software. So we don’t develop all the code,” says Scheer. There are public plans for new features, although the code is published on Microsoft-owned Github. All data handled by Options must be processed in France and stored with providers who have approval from ANSSI, the country’s cybersecurity agency. Earlier this month, the Dutch government removed its open-source code from GitHub and moved it to a Forgejo instance hosted on a government-owned server.
While open source is important, the French government is also working with other countries and private companies on the development of its own tools. “We can reuse things that the community has developed and we contribute to the community,” says Shire. For example, Visio, which can host calls of up to 150 people and has AI transcription of calls, is built on technology from French companies Outscale and Pynote.
While Scherer’s department is aiming to lead by example, all central government agencies in France must plan to move away from American technology by this fall in office software, antivirus, AI, databases and more. On April 23, French officials also announced that after a years-long decision process, the country would move its health data platform away from Microsoft to local cloud provider Scaleway.
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