Échirolles, a small French city of around 35,000 inhabitants, has been awarded the highest level of the “Territoire numérique Libre” (TNL) label. The label has existed since 2016 and aims to reward cities and public bodies that pursue the use of free and open source collaborative solutions for their administration. The award ceremony took place during the Paris Open Source Experience on 9 and 10 November. There, Échirolles was recognised for its important work towards an open, digitalised administration. The level 5 of the label is awarded on the basis of a 12 page questionnaire with…

With worries of big household energy bills this winter, carbon footprint calculators may find a new use as people look for ways to analyse their energy use. "Nos Gestes Climat" (Our Climate Actions, repository) is a piece of software that already does part of this job, and its history shows how an open source project found new purposes addressing some of the most pressing needs of today. The code itself has already served in at least three very different projects: mycompanyinfrance.fr (repository) was originally developed by the French government in 2014 so that individuals and companies could…

The Declaration on the Common values and challenges of European Public Administrations underlines an overarching support of open source and interoperability within the public sector. On 16 and 17 March, the 27 EU ministers in charge of public administration, public transformation and civil service, alongside the European Commissioner for Budget and Administration Johannes Hahn as well as the European Commissioner for Cohesion and Reforms Elisa Ferreira, met at the National Institute of Public Service (Institut National du Service Public). The event aimed to discuss common challenges and…

ANSSI, the French national agency for the security of information systems, contributed to the development of the OpenCTI project (Open Cyber Threat Intelligence), in a partnership with the Computer Emergency Response Team for the EU Institutions, bodies and agencies (CERT-EU). The community project released its latest software version in September 2021. OpenCTI is a cyber threat analysis knowledge management and sharing tool, published under an Apache 2.0 licence, and today managed by the Luatix association. Luatix is a non-profit organisation which conducts research and development in the…

The Ille-et-Vilaine department in France deployed an open source software for file management to 21 middle schools, accounting for 12,000 users between teachers and students. In December 2021, the French public interest group SIB (Syndicat Interhospitalier de Bretagne) kicked off a project with the German open source company Nextcloud GmbH and the British company Collabora Productivity with a view to improve the education system in the Ille-et-Vilaine department in France. Based in Rennes, SIB is a group for public interest which provides digital services as core business, managing the…

The Minister of Public Sector Transformation and the Civil Service of France, Amélie de Montchalin announced a new action plan for open source software in the public sector at the closing of the Paris Open Source Experience conference on 10 November. It sets up an Open Source Program Office within the public administration that will be responsible for implementing the plan and managing the state’s involvement in open source. The goals are as follows: to increase awareness and use of free software and digital commons in the administration, to develop and support the opening of source code in…

On the occasion of the 2019 European elections and ahead of France’s 2022 presidential elections, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs launched in 2019 a toolbox of open source software and open resources to fight disinformation. As of December 2021, Internet users can access software to detect fake Twitter accounts, assess the legality of political advertisement on Facebook, and use multiple further resources on good practices to counter disinformation. Further work is ongoing to develop and deploy additional online resources. Fake news, disinformation, misinformation: in the past decade…

The French public administration outlined the governmental programme for open source, open data and public algorithms. On 27 September, the French Minister of Public Transformation and Service Amélie de Montchalin presented the 15 ministerial roadmaps on public data, algorithms and public source codes, which represents a milestone in the digital transformation strategy of the current French public administration. The same Ministry will monitor the implementation phase of all the roadmaps, and the Prime Minister will then evaluate the programme as a whole at the next inter-ministerial committee…

Botanical gardens located in Switzerland and France have together developed an application consisting of microservices for documenting and sharing data among each other and potentially other gardens. Les Convervatoire et Jardin botaniques de la Ville de Genève (Conservatory and Botanical Garden of the city of Geneva, CJB) is a museum and an institution in Geneva, Switzerland. It took the initiative to a new open source toolkit, Botalista, which was finished in September 2020. It is meant to address all the needs of botanical gardens. The botanical gardens involved, in Paris, Bordeaux, Bern and…

In July 2020 the French National Assembly convened a special mission on building and promoting national and European digital sovereignty. The mission has just published its first report last month with a set of recommendations, among which it suggests using open source software as a default in public administrations. The report was presented by MPs Jean-Luc Wassermann and Philippe Latombe. The document is set in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the rapid switch to digital that occurred in the last year, pointing to the necessity of prioritising technological independence. The report…

The French Ministry of Research shared its Second National Plan for Open Science for the years 2021-2024 on 6 July. The Plan foresees several initiatives aimed at increasing the reach of open science principles, and, for the first time, includes open source as a critical component of scientific research that needs to be recognised and supported. The first Plan was announced in 2018 and was so far coordinated by the Committee for Open Science bringing together the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, research and higher education organisations and scientific community…

By addressing the challenges and opportunities of using open source in the public domain, the session focused on the benefits that public administration could gain from open source and drew ideas to fuel cross-border cooperation. From 20 until 22 April 2021, the European Commission hosted the three-day DigitALL Public conference. Speakers coming from the public sector (at international, European, national and local level), industry, SMEs and academia took part. Following the conclusion of the ISA2 Programme, which lasted from 2016 to 2020 and gravitated around the concept of interoperability…