Over the past few months, the French government has accelerated its efforts to develop and deploy its technology to government officials. The country has arguably emerged at the head of Europe’s growing digital sovereignty drive, which aims to reduce some reliance on US-based technology due to concerns about data security, the unpredictability of the Trump administration, and changing prices. French Budget Minister David Amiel recently called on the country to “break free” from US systems and use those it can control.
“We don’t just explain what we want to do,” Stephanie Scher, head of DINUM, France’s digital transformation ministry, told WIRED over a call on the country’s Visio video calling platform. “We’ve already done that on some things.” So far, more than 40,000 French government employees have started using the local video platform, while the rest will move away from Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and others by 2027. “We are confident enough to use it every day and not rely on just one representative who will tell us, ‘You have to use my video conference,’” says Shire.
Across French central government agencies and the broad civil service, officials plan to shift to as many French, European, and open source technology alternatives as possible in the coming years. Scheer says it is important for the French government to control the technology it uses, with data stored locally in the country, rather than abroad.
As part of this, DINUM has been developing a suite of productivity tools, collectively called “LaSuite”, since at least 2023. In addition to Visio, it includes the instant messaging app Tchap and Messagerie instead of Gmail or Outlook, Fichiers for documents and file sharing, as well as text editor Docs, and Grist for spreadsheets. Some of the programs are still in a beta phase and have not been fully rolled out to French officials yet. However, Tchap already has 420,000 active users, Shire says, with 20,000 government employees adopting it every month.
“We rely on open source software,” says Shire. “So we don’t develop all the code.” There are general plans for new features, though the code has been posted on Microsoft-owned Github. All data processed by Alternatives in France must be processed and stored with service providers that have obtained approval from the country’s cybersecurity agency ANSSI. Earlier this month, the Dutch government moved its open source code from GitHub to a Forgejo instance hosted on government-owned servers.
While open source is key, the French government is also working with other countries and private companies to develop its tools. “We can reuse what has been developed by the community and contribute to that community,” says Shire. For example, Visio, which can host calls for up to 150 people and has AI call transcription, is built on technology from French companies Outscale and Pyannote.
While Scheer’s administration aims to set an example, all of France’s central government agencies must make plans to move away from American technology – across office software, antivirus, artificial intelligence, databases, and more – by this fall. On April 23, French officials also announced that the country would move its health data platform away from Microsoft to local cloud provider Scaleway, after a years-long decision-making process.
