France shifts to Linux

France’s health-insurance system is moving 80,000 employees onto the French state’s open-source work tools and away from Microsoft-style collaboration software. (numerique.gouv.fr) The agreement was announced on April 1 by the Interministerial Directorate for Digital Affairs, known as DINUM, and the National Health Insurance Fund, known as Cnam. It covers the rollout of LaSuite, the state’s collaboration suite, across Assurance Maladie’s network. (numerique.gouv.fr) Three named replacements are Tchap for messaging, Visio for video meetings, and FranceTransfert for large-file sharing. DINUM said the deployment is part of a broader push for “digital sovereignty” inside the French state. (numerique.gouv.fr) France tied the Assurance Maladie move to a wider campaign against dependence on non-European software vendors. In a separate April 9 briefing, DINUM said the state aims to reduce “extra-European” dependencies and announced a shift in government workstations from Windows to Linux. (numerique.gouv.fr) That same April 9 statement said many agencies still rely on Teams, Zoom, GoTo Meeting, or Webex, which the government says raises security, cost, and coordination problems. In February, DINUM also ordered wider use of Visio as the standard video tool for public employees. (numerique.gouv.fr, numerique.gouv.fr) LaSuite is built from open-source components and is already used each month by more than 500,000 public employees across 15 ministries and other agencies, according to the government. The platform is hosted in France and presented as part of the state’s sovereignty roadmap. (lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr) Tchap, the messaging app in the package, is run by the French administration for public-sector workers and is based on the Matrix protocol. Its public site says it is hosted on the Interior Ministry’s cloud and that its code is publicly viewable. (tchap.numerique.gouv.fr, tchap.gouv.fr) Visio, the video service replacing commercial meeting platforms in parts of government, is described by the state as an open, secure service hosted in France. DINUM said the goal is to give agencies one common meeting tool instead of a mix of foreign services. (lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr, numerique.gouv.fr) Assurance Maladie is not a small pilot site: Cnam says it leads the national network that runs France’s statutory health-insurance system, while local bodies carry out operations across the country. That scale is why the 80,000-seat rollout is one of the clearest tests yet of whether France can replace foreign office software inside a major public institution. (assurance-maladie.ameli.fr, numerique.gouv.fr)