This Wednesday, January 18, the Inter-Ministerial Office for Digital (DiNum) organized a “Digital and Territories Day” in Paris in partnership with the National Agency for Territorial Unity (ANCT) and the Inter-Ministerial Office for Social Transformation (DITP). An opportunity to take stock of the activities of the Digital Transformation of Local Government Foundation (TNT) two years after its launch and now that the envelope – 88 million euros – was completely used up.
As a reminder, this fund was launched in January 2021 as part of the France Relance plan to accelerate and support the digital transformation of local governments.
Open source projects
The government wanted the developed projects to be free and open source. Now it’s time for communication, the idea is to have them deployed by as many communities as possible, especially the smallest ones that don’t have the funds to develop their own digital devices.
Maria Kotora, DiNum’s Digital Transformation Program Manager, congratulated the regions of New-Aquitaine, PACA and Brittany for their overrepresentation among the winning projects.
Many programs were designed by the winners to relieve the territorial agents of some time-consuming tasks and make life easier for the citizens: management of the post office, cemeteries (in particular concessions, documents of which, sometimes dating back several decades, were difficult to find), management and allocation of places in the nursery, billing for the dining room, etc.
Do not widen the gap between citizens and territorial agents
This day was also an opportunity to recall that these new mechanisms sometimes require the creation of additional support services for citizens, especially in rural areas. Geoffrey Mathon, First Deputy of the Municipality of Loos en Goel, a small town of 7,000 people located near Lans, whose rather aging population is “experiencing a rather pronounced digital divide”, explains: “For some of our citizens, the dematerialization of these services can be perceived as an increase gulf between them and our territorial agents.”
Then the city simultaneously developed “digital terminals” in the mayor’s office, in the premises of the Central Military Commission and other social services. In-Person Services to support them in using these new tools and to provide computing equipment to those who do not have it.
A platform for booking college places after school hours
Among the major funded projects, Delphine Bouillon-Marilli, Territorial Engineer of the Department of Isère, presented the “Lounge on Demand”, for which 700,000 euros were allocated. “We started with two observations,” she explains: “On the one hand, the college-competent community operates 97 institutions, which is 700,000 m2 of underutilized public buildings outside school hours. departmental associative fabric is constantly in demand for premises available for regular or one-time events.
Therefore, the goal was to seamlessly link supply and demand for premises. This is done through the creation of an online platform with the indication of vacancies and available rooms, equipped with a secure payment tool and launched this summer. Control remains with the colleges, as well as all profits. After that, the goal is to replicate this system for the department’s gyms, auditoriums and other cultural spaces and open access to private companies.
Two projects provided by the Gironde
The other two winning projects were submitted by Christophe Le Bivic, digital project manager for Gironde Numérique’s mixed syndicate with 18 agents and two data centers. Tools developed during the Covid period, thanks to 58,000 euros provided by the state.
First, SMS Alert, an SMS distribution service that allowed subscribers to be alerted to school openings or closures, new mask recommendations, etc. Then, a secure e-signature platform to facilitate the dematerialization of local services and procedures authorities. These two projects were freely licensed and made available in open source to any other territory wishing to use them.
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