French electronic infrastructure to include smartcard EHR and nationwide EPR

The French Government has launched an ambitious programme to connect all public agencies within a single electronic infrastructure. The aim is to provide the French public with a single electronic entry-point to all government services, as well as providing a framework for unifying government and other public services.

Named ADELE (from ADministration ELEctronique), the new infrastructure is scheduled to be rolled out between now and 2007. It will include a series of smartcards that will identify members of the public to government departments, as well as providing a portable electronic healthcare record.

The French government hopes that ADELE will save it at least €5bn a year, and has set itself the target of achieving €7bn in annual savings.

The announcement was accompanied by an attack, by the man responsible for overseeing implementation of the programme, on the dominance of American software in European government computing. Although not named directly, the criticism was clearly directed at Microsoft in particular. The French Government intends that the ADELE programme will become the basis for developing open-source solutions in the French public sector and spreading those solutions into other areas of government services.

ADELE was announced by Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin on a visit to Tours, the capital of the Rhone-Alps region. The location was significant. Rhone-Alps has served as the testbed for many French Government initiatives in open access and electronic government. It is currently trialling the ‘3939 first number for government’ service: a single phone number for all government and public service inquiries, modelled on a similar service developed in Canada. The 3939 service is being incorporated into the ADELE framework, and will be rolled out across France during this year.

As planned, ADELE will eventually comprise some 140 different elements or projects. Most of these will be aimed at interconnecting the computer infrastructures of central and local government and other public-service agencies, such as the public health service, in time for the 2007 completion date set by the Government.

Raffarin's announcement included the launch of both the ADELE strategy and the detailed tactical implementation to be adopted by public-service agencies. The Plan stratégique pour l'administration électronique (PSAE) contains the overall strategy for ADELE. The Projet d'action pour l'administration électronique (P2AE) provides the programme of action for its implementation.

Launched with the title Adele – simplifying your life, the new electronic administration plan is more to do with simplifying the business of government. Like many other European countries, France has engaged in a wide variety of egovernment initiatives. These have been mostly distinct and unconnected. The aim of ADELE is to consolidate these separate initiatives, and accelerate the pace of automation throughout the French public services.

By creating a single infrastructure for all egovernment, ADELE explicitly creates a single framework for interconnecting and updating all public data repositories. Changes to citizen information will be immediately available to all other government agencies.

ADELE will not rely only on Internet access. The new infrastructure will also provide access via telephone and digital television. France is rapidly catching up with the English-speaking countries in Internet-use, with 42 percent of the population now online.

The French government is headlining four new services that will be introduced as part of the ADELE programme. MOVE will allow members of the public to register a change of address with a single nominated authority. This information will then be shared automatically with all other government agencies. The Daily Living Card will provide a single sign-on for services provided by local authorities, such as library, swimming pool, local transport, school meals and nursery services. The National ID Card, or CNIE, will replace current French ID cards with an electronically secured smartcard.

The Vital smartcard will replace the existing government health-insurance card. The new Vital smartcard will also incorporate an abbreviated electronic healthcare record, and provide a secured key to access nationally held electronic patient data over the ADELE network.

ADELE will also introduce an electronic procurement system that will be available for use by all government agencies. The programme will also incorporate a major trial of open-source software by the French Government. Jacques Sauret, Director General of the Electronic Administration Development Agency (ADAE), the government body overseeing the implementation of ADELE, told journalists that 95% of all government workstations ran on software from the "northern part of the American West Coast", a thinly veiled reference to Seattle-based Microsoft. He said that Adele would be used to "redress the balance, re-establish competition, and reduce government dependence on a single supplier". Sauret indicated that an increasing proportion of workstations would adopt Linux-based solutions.