The environmental municipality has announced its intention to abandon Microsoft’s office tools and develop a series of free software to get out of “dependence on American software solutions”.
“A desire for emancipation”. The Lyon environmental municipality announced this Tuesday its intention to abandon the IT tools developed by Microsoft, in order to strengthen its digital sovereignty. A new free office suite will be created to replace.
“In a context of growing awareness of the challenges of digital sovereignty and dependence on US software solutions, the City of Lyon initiates a major transformation of its digital tools”said the municipality by press release.
Key “Two structuring projects”. The creation of a free and interoperable collaborative suite on the one hand, which will be baptized “open digital territory”. The progressive deployment of free office software, on the other hand. This is Onlyoffice for office automation as well as Linux and PostgreSql for systems and databases. This is to replace the Microsoft Office suite in municipal services.
“We are proud to register the city of Lyon in a trajectory of digital sovereignty, whose election of Donald Trump recalled the importance, Insists Bertrand Maes, assistant delegate for digital policy. We thus want to protect the data from residents and inhabitants and promote the local economy. »»
Regional data centers
The open digital territory suite will be developed with the Metropolis of Lyon and the Inter -municipal Information Technology Syndicate for Cities (Sitiv). She will be based on “Open Source tools (Jitsi, Onlyoffice with NextCloud) allowing videoconference and office automation with co-publishing”. It will be hosted in regional data centers. It benefited from a subsidy of 2 million euros in the ANCT. “Several thousand agents from 9 communities already use this solution, mutual to national”specifies the city of Lyon.
“While several major French communities begin only a diagnosis of their digital dependence (tie-break project, urban France, interconnected), the city of Lyon takes action and anticipates the next stages of a transition to a more ethical, sustainable and sovereign digital with structuring projects”supports the city’s press release.
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In addition to strengthening the “Technological sovereignty of public services” This development should make it possible to extend the lifespan of IT equipment, thus reducing their environmental footprint, according to the town hall. This transition is planned over several years.
