Attached to the Ministry of Ecological Transition, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation ensures the supervision and regulation of air transport in France. As part of its digital transformation, the DGAC has set up a dedicated entity, the Digital Factory.
The structure supports the innovation and digitalization approach of the organization and its various business departments. It thus supports innovation project leaders in developments and feasibility studies.
Hands in the dirt and confronting the tools with reality
La Fabrique also carries out experiments and acculturation actions with employees on uses linked to digital technology. It is in this context that it has initiated an approach described as prospective aimed at identifying and testing low code no code solutions on the market.
“The ambition was to get our hands dirty, test them and check whether they responded to use cases by confronting them with reality through field tests with agents. We could thus guarantee that the solution ultimately chosen met expectations”, testifies Belkacem Laïmouche during the IMAgine Day low code no code conference.
During these experiments, the DGAC decided to separate low code and no code, further indicates the head of the Digital Factory. On low code, advanced tests focused on the Simplicite Software solution. For the no code, Convertigo was chosen.
The uses targeted for low code concerned the dematerialization of business processes, “and in particular activities presenting very little added value for agents.” Ambitious, the Factory has also tackled the digitalization of a more complex use case.
This concerns “a sprawling process, which interacts with different data, security and safety data, but which also interfaces with multiple platforms”, declares Belkacem Laïmouche.
Low code immune to extraterritorial laws
This second category of use cases was an opportunity for the DGAC to “challenge the Simplicity solution” and verify its ability to deal with complex issues. To carry out such a project, the civil aviation department also had to deal with specific constraints, particularly in terms of data hosting.
“We are looking for solutions that are immune to extraterritorial laws,” explains the manager of the Factory. This requirement therefore resulted in the choice of a French publisher – offering on-prem or cloud hosting.
The experiments carried out allowed the DGAC to establish the potential and “relevance” of low code to “facilitate the very rapid design of applications. But at the same time, we must put in place governance to define roles and manage the life cycle – maintenance and updating – of applications.”
In conclusion, Thomas Repolt, co-founder of Simplicite, also insists on the distinction between low code and no code platforms. “We are aimed at IT professionals. This excludes Citizen Developers from the professions.”