The French government announced yesterday a joint declaration of intent signed in partnership with Germany in the area of digital sovereignty of public administration.
First intention, “to jointly develop a suite of sovereign digital products based on open source and interoperable solutions making it possible to build a coherent and complete offer of digital tools for public agents, in particular an instant messaging service.”
In other words, France would like to export and pool the efforts already put in place with the deployment of Tchap messaging, an instant messaging solution made available to public sector agents.
Promoting the European ecosystem
The question of messaging tools used by civil servants has been a subject of questioning for several months, particularly following the publication of a ministerial circular recommending that members of the government abandon foreign solutions such as Whatsapp, Telegram or Signal, in favor of French solutions like Tchap or Olvid.
“This strategy will benefit the ecosystem of European digital services and products, by making it less captive to certain technologies and by opening up more massive markets around a few leading products in their category while providing ministerial departments with a competitive alternative” explains Stéphanie Schaer, interministerial director of digital on the French side.
Ultimately, both Germany and France would like to extend this collaboration to other member states of the European Union.
AI for administration
The second line of work is the development of “artificial intelligence tools for administration, based on large open source language models.”
This time we must read the concern regarding major AI players such as OpenAI, Facebook or Microsoft who are positioning themselves as key players in the generative artificial intelligence market.
Digital diplomacy on security
Finally, in the field of cybersecurity, France also intends to rely on international partnerships.
The government is today inaugurating, in collaboration with Great Britain, a conference on the subject of spyware and the threats posed by the proliferation of hacking services.
The conference brings together representatives from more than 35 nations as well as private players including Apple, Google and Microsoft and aims to discuss ways that can be implemented to limit the risks linked to the proliferation of computer intrusion tools and services. .
The conference is an opportunity to sign an agreement known as the “Pall Mall Process”, which commits to considering measures to discourage “irresponsible” behavior and encourage greater transparency on the practices of this industry.