As the tension between President Donald Trump and Europe continue to be at odds, the continent is increasing the speed of its actions reduce its dependence on American technology. Cities and governments are turning Microsoft Office to open source alternatives, moving European cloud hosting for Internal AIand transferring defense data to systems outside the United States to be involved. Nowhere has this been more clear than in France.
In the past few months, the French government has stepped up its efforts to develop and deploy its technology to government officials. The country, arguably, has emerged at the forefront of a push for digital freedom in Europe, which aims to reduce some reliance on US-based technology over concerns about data security, the unpredictability of the Trump administration, and changing prices. French budget minister David Amiel recently to be called for the government to “withdraw” from America’s systems and use those it can control.
“We don’t just explain what we want to do,” Stéphanie Schaer, head of DINUMFrance’s digital transformation ministry, tells WIRED over the phone on national video calling platform Visio. “We’ve already done it in a few things.” So far, more than 40,000 French government employees have started using the adult video platform at home, while others will leave Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and others by 2027. “We are confident enough to use it every day and we don’t rely on just one actor who will tell us you should use my video conference,” Schaer says.
Across France’s central government agencies and large public services, officials are planning to move to French, European, and open technology alternatives as possible in the coming years. Schaer says it is important for the French government to be in control of the technology it uses, with data being stored locally, not abroad.
As part of this, DINUM has been developing a set of productivity tools, collectively called “LaSuite,” since at least 2023. Along with Visio, it includes the instant messaging program Tchap, Messagerie instead of Gmail or Outlook, Fichiers for documents and file sharing, as well as a text editing program. Documentand Grist for spreadsheets. Some programs are still in beta and have not yet been fully distributed to French officials. However, Tchap already has 420,000 active users, Schaer says, with 20,000 civil servants using it every month.
“We’re based on open source software. So we don’t make all the code,” Schaer says. There are public programs new elementsalthough the code is published on Microsoft’s proprietary Github. All data processed by the alternative means must be processed in France and stored by service providers that have been approved by the country’s cyber security agency. THE TRAP. Earlier this month, the Dutch government moved its open-source code off GitHub and on a Forgejo instance hosted on government-owned servers.
Although open source is important, the French government also works with other countries and private companies on the development of its tools. “We can reuse what has been made by the community and we contribute to this community,” Schaer says. For example, Visio, which can receive calls of up to 150 people and has AI call text, is built on technology from French companies Outscale and Pyannote.
While the Schaer department aims to lead by example, all French central government agencies should come up with plans to outpace American technology—in office software, antivirus, AI, databases, and more—by this fall. On April 23, French officials also announced that the country will transfer its health data platform from Microsoft to local cloud provider Scaleway, after a multi-year decision process.
