The state wants to return data, infrastructure and strategic solutions to its own management.
France has decided to seriously revise the digital dependence on foreign suppliers. The authorities of the country said that the public sector should gradually move away from proprietary decisions from outside the European Union, bet on open PO and regain control of its own IT infrastructure. One of the most notable points of the new line concerns the jobs of officials: the French state is going to abandon Windows in favor of Linux.
The new course was reported by the interdepartmental department for digital technologies DINUM on the state portal numérique. The agency uses the wording “non-European technologies” and directly explains the task as reducing dependence on decisions created outside the EU. In terms of meaning, we are talking about a wide restructuring of the entire digital environment, and not just about replacing one operating system with another.
DINUM instructed the ministries to prepare a map of current technological dependencies by autumn and to submit a plan for exit from external sources not related to the European Union. The exact timing of implementation has not yet been announced, but the political signal was very clear: the French state no longer wants to build key processes on platforms, development rules, the cost and risks of which are determined by third-party companies.
The Minister of Public Action and Public Accounts David Ammel formulated the position even more rigidly. According to him, the state is not enough just to recognize the dependence, it is time to get rid of it. France, as follows from the statement, intends to rely less on American instruments and regain control over data, infrastructure and strategic decisions. The authorities also emphasize that digital sovereignty is no longer considered the desirable option. For Paris, digital sovereignty has become a mandatory task.
Switching to Linux looks like the most prominent part of the program, but the logic of change is much broader. The French authorities are making it clear that they are ready to revise the entire stack of the technology used if the supplier is outside the EU and works on a closed model. Against this background, open software gets a serious advantage, because it gives more transparency and less binds the user to the will of a particular corporation.
If desired, France will be able to rely on decisions of European origin. Among the possible options in the material are openSUSE and LibreOffice. Both projects fit well into the open standards and lower external dependence. The main question now is not whether the reversal will take place, but how quickly the French ministries will be able to transfer the bulky state machine to a new digital basis.
France has decided to seriously revise the digital dependence on foreign suppliers. The authorities of the country said that the public sector should gradually move away from proprietary decisions from outside the European Union, bet on open PO and regain control of its own IT infrastructure. One of the most notable points of the new line concerns the jobs of officials: the French state is going to abandon Windows in favor of Linux.
The new course was reported by the interdepartmental department for digital technologies DINUM on the state portal numérique. The agency uses the wording “non-European technologies” and directly explains the task as reducing dependence on decisions created outside the EU. In terms of meaning, we are talking about a wide restructuring of the entire digital environment, and not just about replacing one operating system with another.
DINUM instructed the ministries to prepare a map of current technological dependencies by autumn and to submit a plan for exit from external sources not related to the European Union. The exact timing of implementation has not yet been announced, but the political signal was very clear: the French state no longer wants to build key processes on platforms, development rules, the cost and risks of which are determined by third-party companies.
The Minister of Public Action and Public Accounts David Ammel formulated the position even more rigidly. According to him, the state is not enough just to recognize the dependence, it is time to get rid of it. France, as follows from the statement, intends to rely less on American instruments and regain control over data, infrastructure and strategic decisions. The authorities also emphasize that digital sovereignty is no longer considered the desirable option. For Paris, digital sovereignty has become a mandatory task.
Switching to Linux looks like the most prominent part of the program, but the logic of change is much broader. The French authorities are making it clear that they are ready to revise the entire stack of the technology used if the supplier is outside the EU and works on a closed model. Against this background, open software gets a serious advantage, because it gives more transparency and less binds the user to the will of a particular corporation.
If desired, France will be able to rely on decisions of European origin. Among the possible options in the material are openSUSE and LibreOffice. Both projects fit well into the open standards and lower external dependence. The main question now is not whether the reversal will take place, but how quickly the French ministries will be able to transfer the bulky state machine to a new digital basis.
