Building a Digital Workplace for Civil Servants

### Overview In this talk, a representative from the French inter-ministerial digital directorate (DINUM) presents the French initiative to develop a sovereign digital workplace for public agents and civil servants, as well as its expansion to the European level. Rooted in France's 2023 roadmap and earlier digital initiatives, the strategy emphasizes digital sovereignty, open-source technology, and the broader concept of digital "commons"—which combines shared code, data, and open knowledge.

### Key Topics - **Policy and Historical Framework:** France’s initiative dates back to the 2016 law for a Digital Republic (*loi pour une République numérique*), which laid the foundation for government use of open-source tools and open data. It also led to the creation of the *startups d'État* (State startups) program and incubator model, fostering a "maker" mindset among public agents. - **La Suite Numérique:** Launched earlier in the year, *La Suite* is an open-source suite of modular tools and services designed for civil servants. Rather than functioning as a monolithic system, it acts as interoperable building blocks that public employees can use alongside existing tools. - **European Collaboration and Open Source Commons:** The initiative has broadened across European borders. In February, France signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the German Ministry of the Interior to pool resources and jointly develop new features across open-source digital workplace tools, aligning with related efforts such as Germany's openDesk suite. - **Methodology (100-Day Challenges):** To accelerate development, Franco-German teams adopt 100-day development sprints spanning roughly six months (starting around April/May and completing in December). This methodology brings teams together for milestones such as project hackathons.

### Technical Details - **Authentication and SSO (ProConnect):** A critical priority is seamless identity federation and single sign-on across government tools. Building on the citizen-oriented FranceConnect, the administration developed ProConnect for public servants and professionals. The project is focused on interoperability, compliance with emerging EU regulations, and enabling cross-border authentication between French and German public agents. - **Messaging and Mail:** Core communication components include mailboxes and an instant messaging platform built on the Matrix open-source protocol, which is already shared by multiple European governments. - **Joint Challenge Focus Areas:** The Franco-German 100-day challenges target three specific product areas: 1. Single Sign-On (SSO) to enable interoperable tool usage across both countries. 2. Collaborative text editing tools. 3. Open-source artificial intelligence bricks—primarily Large Language Models (LLMs)—used for applications such as automated transcript summarization and generating abstracts from video conference recordings.

### Takeaways - **Non-Replacement Strategy:** When asked whether the project aims to serve as a complete replacement for commercial platforms such as Microsoft Office 365, the speaker clarified that the objective is not a direct replacement. Instead, it addresses unmet administrative needs and fills operational gaps left by existing market tools. - **Expanding European Engagement:** European interest is growing. A recent project milestone in Paris included representatives from seven European countries—the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Denmark, France, Germany, alongside Austria and the Czech Republic (via video conference)—as well as the European Commission.