France is banning government officials from using Microsoft Teams and Zoom 'amid rising geopolitical tensions and fears of foreign surveillance or service disruptions'
France announced Monday, January 26, that it plans to replace American software such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom with its own domestic software, Visio. Visio will be rolled out by 2027 and will only be available for government departments, not private companies or individual members of the public.
As reported by Euronews, David Amiel, minister for the civil service and state reform, said, "The aim is to end the use of non-European solutions and guarantee the security and confidentiality of public electronic communications by relying on a powerful and sovereign tool." It seems France doesn't want another nation's AI LLM like Gemini taking notes during meetings that could include sensitive information.
Visio has been in testing for around a year and already has 40,000 users. By switching to this homegrown software and not paying for licences from American technology companies, France could save €1 million per year per 100,000 users, the French government claims.
The new platform, which includes its own AI transcription abilities, is part of the Suite Numérique plan, Euronews reports. The end goal is to replace other US software such as Gmail and Slack, too, ending France's reliance on foreign information technology.
Visio will be hosted on the cloud infrastructure of Outscale, a French company. Last year's Amazon Web Services outage affected countries all over the world, so France looks to be isolating itself from foreign effects on its own digital services.
Amiel also says this move toward domestic systems "highlights France's commitment to digital sovereignty amid rising geopolitical tensions and fears of foreign surveillance or service disruptions."
Two Danish municipalities moved away from Microsoft software for civil servants last year, and the German state of Schleswig-Holstein followed suit and banned Teams and other Microsoft programmes within the government.
These changes show that Microsoft isn't destined to dominate global software forever. While it's still popular among private businesses and members of the public, more governments are shifting to open-source or local solutions.