France’s move away from Microsoft

This reflects a wider move by the French public sector away from software and services from Microsoft and other US companies to open source and locally developed alternatives.

Matthieu Faure is director of Adullact, an association of French local authorities, which promotes the use of free and open source software in local government.

Faure told Computer Weekly that interest in open source alternatives has accelerated in France following US sanctions against the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2025, which showed the vulnerability of US cloud services to political sanctions.

It led to Microsoft and other US companies cutting off services to French judge Nicolas Guillou, along with other ICC officials, leaving him unable to use Microsoft’s services, shop online or use common phone apps such as Uber, PayPal or Airbnb.

“This sounded a wake-up call for a lot of local government organisations,” he said.

Linking with central government

One of the main driving forces of the project is the need for French local government organisations to communicate securely with central government, which runs its own encrypted messaging service, based on the Matrix encrypted messaging standard.

Tchap, which went live in 2019, has more than 400,000 active monthly users across French central government, where its use became mandatory last year.

The service allows French government departments to keep their communications data on their own infrastructure rather than cloud platforms operated by third parties, which may hold their data in another jurisdiction.

“We want to let the local governments use something that is digitally sovereign. So to stop using WhatsApp is the first target,” said Faure. “The second target is Microsoft Teams,” he added.

Two years ago, Adullact identified the need to offer local government organisations an alternative to WhatsApp to provide secure instant messaging to other government departments.

Adullact, working with Déclic, a network of local government digital technology specialists, ran a small-scale pilot project with four local government regions covering the area around Grenoble, Montpellier and Strasbourg.

Other partners include the Matrix open source specialist Element, which is supplying its Element Server Suite Pro, and the French open source systems integrators Arawa and Teamnet.

Gaps identified

The pilot identified a number of gaps, including the need for local authorities to authenticate the identities of people they were messaging and determine what level of security they had, so they knew what sort of information they could share.

The answer was to link the messaging service to France’s digital identity service, ProConnect, which allows civil servants and private sector employees to use a single “professional identity” to access online government services.

The local authorities also found they needed access, not only to the directories of their own staff, but directories of neighbouring local government organisations to help them connect with people they knew or had met. “We didn’t think about it at the beginning of the project,” said Faure.

Adullact, together with local government digital service provider Sitiv, has provided €100,000 in funding to develop Element’s technology.

That will pay for the development of a “federated directory” that will allow local authorities to locate employees in adjacent areas.

Another upgrade will allow local authorities to invite non-government employees, such as contractors, into private chat rooms for discussions. Work is also underway to link the local government messaging service with Tchap.

The messaging system will be available to 10,000 local government organisations across France from January next year.

Cost savings promised over time

Matrix is unlikely to lead to any immediate cost savings for local authorities, but it will do over time, Adullact claims.

The cost of software provided by Microsoft and other large suppliers is increasing year on year and is not sustainable, Faure argues. “The money issue is a strong driver to move to something new,” he said.

One advantage of Matrix compared to WhatsApp is that it is possible to verify who you are talking to, offering better security for confidential discussions.

In the future, Matrix could also offer video services, allowing it to operate as an alternative to Microsoft Teams. 

“We just wanted to begin with text and voice message, and in the next step, we may deploy the video aspect. We wanted to do it one step at a time,” said Faure.

He expects local government bodies to deploy the technology gradually. If it follows the pattern of other open source projects, half of France’s local authorities could be using Matrix within five years, reaching 80% in a decade.

How to move to open source

While IT staff are often enthusiastic about open source alternatives, employees may prefer to stick with the software they know. “We know in some territories there is high addiction to Microsoft,” said Faure.

“But something that we’ve learned in the past years is that when you want to transition, you have got to do it smoothly and gradually,” he said. “If you go for big bang, this is a failure for sure.”

It’s important to identify key people who are keen to learn how to use open source tools. “They will be strong assets on which you will be able to rely to help the other ones that simply do not care,” he said.

Erik Da Silva, project manager at open source software integrator Arawa, agrees. Moving to Matrix would take a typical local authority about three months.

“The best way to get a revolution going inside your organisation is to radically switch tools. So this should be a progressive transition, in my view,” he said.

Amandine Le Pape, co-founder of Element, told Computer Weekly that European countries were more focused on digital sovereignty than the UK.

“They are a bit more self-conscious about it and trying to make sure they are not dependent on any third-party countries. And they are trying to get into a position where they are not locked into any specific vendor,” she said.

However, Le Pape noted there have been more signs of interest from the UK public sector organisations in digital sovereignty over the past year. “The time lag is quite interesting,” she said.