France Expands Open Source Use, Seeking Interoperability, 'Digital Sovereignty', and 'Democratic Confidence'

Euractive reports: The French government's roadmap for developing open source to make it a vector of digital sovereignty and a guarantee of "democratic confidence" was presented by Public Transformation and Civil Service Minister Amélie de Montchalin on Wednesday (10 November).

EURACTIV France reports Montchalin spoke at the closing of the first edition of the "Open Source Experience", which took place from 9-10 November and brought together all players in the free software community in Paris. "We must now build the public action of the new century," she said, indicating that France will look to inspire the "many States [that] seek to embark" on greater openness of public data and the use of open source... With the vast majority of relations between citizens and state services now being digital, Montchalin believes a "culture of transparency" is necessary for "democratic trust". It is also a matter of digital sovereignty, she added.

According to a European Commission study published in September, investment in open source software in 2018 generated a sum of €65-95 billion in revenue. According to the same report, France was crowned European champion of open source policies.

To help French administrations make greater use of such solutions, Montchalin announced the creation of a team within the Interministerial Digital Directorate responsible for the promotion and inter-ministerial coordination of this mission. She also revealed the launch of the code.gouv.fr platform, which will inventory all source code published by public organisations... [French prime minister] Jean Castex urged all government departments on 27 April to do more to facilitate access to their data, algorithms and codes "in open formats that can be used by third parties". The PM also urged them to turn to free and open software...

[Montchalin] wants the state to retain "control over the solutions" it uses. She also stressed the importance of interoperability — the ability to work with other existing or future products or systems — and reversibility — the ability to resume using data or software in the event of migration to another solution. "By using open source software, you give yourself much more autonomy than by using proprietary software and a fortiori proprietary cloud services that are hosted outside Europe," Stéfane Fermigier, co-president of the Union of Free Software and Open Digital Businesses, told EURACTIV.
The article also summarizes a concern from French digital law firm LegalUP Consulting that open source code "makes it easier to discover security flaws, which can be exploited."

But a representative from LegalUP also calls open source software "an extremely interesting alternative for Europe, a third way between digital giants and local players; an opportunity to ensure independence through neutrality and decentralisation rather than conflict."

Re: Massachusetts tried this

[saloomy]

Democratic confidence. Is that faith in elections? I feel as a citizenry, we can have voting privacy, or voting confidence. Not both. I think the latter is more important. I think every vote should be displayed on a spreadsheet with all voters listed and how they voted on every question on the ballot. Maybe mask them with socials or some other unique ID. That way, if someone sees their ID listed who did not vote, or a vote in a direction they did not intend, they can raise their hand. No more equations abou

Re: Massachusetts tried this

[Gravis Zero]

I feel as a citizenry, we can have voting privacy, or voting confidence. Not both.

Then you don't understand voting technology in the least.

Re:

[BESTouff]

That's exactly the huge problem with "modern" voting technology: nearly nobody understands it all, from software downto hardware, so nobody will verify that the vote happened correctly. The transparent ballot box system can and will be verified by anybody who wants to do it, from the ballot insertion to the votes counting. That verifiability is a marvellous property that shouldn't be lost. Electronic vote can't keep it.

Re:

[Gravis Zero]

Ballot box stuffing was a thing long before electronic voting.

Re:

[Gravis Zero]

Fully electronic voting is a bad idea. However, there are many security features that you would lack without a hybrid system, like unique identifiers per ballot that can be used to detect ballot duplication. Technology has it's place but going to far with it without it is a bad idea.

Re: Massachusetts tried this

[Richard_at_work]

You know historically that the US has had more issue with coercion of voters than it has with voter fraud, right? What you are proposing re-opens the door to criminals, employers, relations et al being able to ensure that their workers/friends/colleagues/family/victims vote "the right way to not get hurt".

You could try and accept that there simply isnt a problem to be solved in the current voting system... The issue of voter fraud is, right now, just political ammunition used by one side to sway their base, nothing more.

Re:

[xalqor]

I agree that we shouldn't expose everyone's votes, for the reasons you stated. But we do have a problem.

Yes, in general the system we have is adequate at detecting attempted election fraud. It even resisted Trump's big lie about fraud, because the judicial process worked after the election.

But we found out that many people don't know how elections work, and they are susceptible to believing obvious lies about the process. Remember "stop the count"? Lies about absentee voting?

And we also found out that a gro

Re:

[Richard_at_work]

The problem that the US has is not that its electoral system is broken, its that its political system is broken and its getting more broken with each year.

If you look into US politics from the outside, its plain to see that your politics are getting ever more polarised with each year - and largely theres one party where cooperation is forthcoming and another party which is out to beat the first party at all cost.

Take for example all the Covid-19 relief bills passed between January 2020 and January 2021 - wh

Re:

[xalqor]

Right. It's easy to imagine how it could eventually lead to a civil war -- if people have an attitude that everyone who doesn't agree with them is an enemy instead of a fellow citizen, and they treat them as an enemy, they'll eventually become enemies. The lying, cheating, sabotage, and demonization tactics will have severe consequences.

It's a very difficult problem, and you're right that changes to the electoral system alone won't fix it. But good changes in a variety of areas, including the electoral syst

Re: Massachusetts tried this

[mamba-mamba]

I think every vote should be displayed on a spreadsheet with all voters listed and how they voted on every question on the ballot. Maybe mask them with socials or some other unique ID. That way, if someone sees their ID listed who did not vote, or a vote in a direction they did not intend, they can raise their hand. No more equations about election integrity.

If you don't understand the problem with this then basically you understand NOTHING about voter manipulation. It is absolutely essential that nobody knows how you vote. Otherwise they can bully you into voting a certain way, or pay you to vote a certain way. Of course they can still bully or bribe you, but you can lie and they will never know how you voted. This is not theoretical. This is based on what actually happens.

Re:

[SteelCamel]

Try the UK system. Votes on paper, in physical ballot boxes, counted by hand, and watched by anyone who wants to. It's not impossible to manipulate, but pretty difficult as you have to move (or create, or destroy) large numbers of physical objects, most likely in numerous locations, while avoiding detection from many different people with an interest in you not doing that.
Yes, it's slow, but who cares? We can still get a result in under a day, why do you need it any quicker?

Re:Massachusetts tried this

[hey!]

France is going far beyond what Massachusetts tried. Massachusetts attempted something modest and in itself sensible: mandate open *formats* so anybody could interchange documents with the government. This also *theoretically* would allow state agencies their choice of compliant software. The practical problem was that with one dominant vendor, even that vendor's *mistakes* in implementing an open standard become a de facto *closed* standard.

France isn't dicking around with *formats*. It's talking about *open source*, and that is a very different kettle of fish. Open source makes the actual *implementation* of a file format transparent and non-proprietary, along with every other facet of the system's behavior. That might not necessarily mean much to small scale user, but it really frees an entity with the scale and resources of the French government from an individual vendor.

Re:

[fahrbot-bot]

Expect Microsoft to do this again with French open source standards.

[...insert French "surrender joke" here...]

Re:

[fred6666]

What is funny is that these jokes are still going on, despite the fact that we now know that George W Bush was wrong: there were no WMDs in Iraq, and France was right not to go to war on such motives.

Vendor client relationship

[Baron_Yam]

If your business depends on a single vendor, you're working for that vendor and not the other way around.

Running a government on Windows is just stupid. It means Microsoft can shut you down with a Windows Update. Which means the US government decides whether your government functions or not.

Sure, nobody's threatened anybody with it, but that doesn't mean it's smart to leave the vulnerability in place when there is an alternative.

Go open source, start paying companies other than Microsoft and their partners for support.

Windows is 100% secure

[Required Snark]

The article also summarizes a concern from French digital law firm LegalUP Consulting that open source code "makes it easier to discover security flaws, which can be exploited."

There has never been an exploit in any Microsoft product ever, because it is all closed source. Just ask a French digital law firm.

Re:Windows is 100% secure

[Bert64]

It's worse than that, because with closed source you create a two-tier system - those who have access to the source and those who don't.

Those with access to the source include organizations such as the NSA, who have already developed and used exploits for their own ends.

Since members of the public gaining access to the source is of questionable legality at best (ie leaked copies), legitimate security researchers will steer clear of it. On the other hand malicious parties will have no problem obtaining the source and using it.

If the source is open then everyone remains on a level playing field at least.

Vive Le France

[groobly]

France, the greatest country in the history of the world, with the smartest most beautiful people! How do I know this? I asked a Frenchman.