France’s government is building its own encrypted messenger service

Re:France’s government is building its own encrypted messeng... by Davidbrcz on Tuesday April 17, 2018 @01:19AM (#16855684)

Comment from a French insider: It will not work. The last two IT projects the government ordered I have in mind are the ears dropping facility for the police and SAIP, an application to warn citizens in case of a dramatic event such as a terrorist attack. Both are failures. On the first one, the police complains of crashes, slowness, and not fulfilling its missions. The second simply does not warn people when there is an attack...

The worst is that it will cost tax payers millions

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Re:France’s government is building its own encrypted messeng... by tangue on Tuesday April 17, 2018 @03:35AM (#16856295)

You forgot Louvois which was used to pay the soldiers' salary. The project costed 500 millions € before being cancelled and a new contract bid was won ... by the company that was unable to write the software in the first place ...

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Re:France’s government is building its own encrypted messeng... by barbs on Tuesday April 17, 2018 @02:58AM (#16856129)

Lets hope it's not as bad as this French government project:

https://projectfailures.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/project-fro...

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Re:France’s government is building its own encrypted messeng... by afsina on Tuesday April 17, 2018 @03:57AM (#16856393)

All government projects goes wrong (I was in several of them). But man this was extreme.

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Re:France’s government is building its own encrypted messeng... by Arathorn on Tuesday April 17, 2018 @03:35AM (#16856297)

As someone using it already, it works pretty well actually ;p

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Re:France’s government is building its own encrypted messeng... by isolli on Tuesday April 17, 2018 @04:23AM (#16856493)

Such a comment is meaningless without context. How often do corporate IT projects fail? How often do government IT projects fail?

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Re:France’s government is building its own encrypted messeng... by loup-vaillant on Tuesday April 17, 2018 @09:02AM (#16857841)

The problem is not really about corporate vs government, it's about size.

These folks tend to think big. Everything else stems from that. What they really need is a little app with simple messaging, end to end encryption, and a server that doesn't log anything they don't want it to log. What they are likely to get if they pay some big shot contractor big money to do it is a Swiss army knife the size of a kitchen sink. With bugs.

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Re:France’s government is building its own encrypted messeng... by icebraining on Tuesday April 17, 2018 @04:40AM (#16856551)

How is the corporate failure rate relevant?

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Re:France’s government is building its own encrypted messeng... by isolli on Tuesday April 17, 2018 @08:54AM (#16857798)

It is relevant because IT projects are inherently difficult, and many of them fail. Just because the French government failed at two projects mentioned in the original comment does not mean that a) it's particularly bad at IT projects or b) it will necessarily fail again. Having the corporate failure rate as a baseline could help assess the proficiency of governments around the world.

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Re:France’s government is building its own encrypted messeng... by coldtea on Tuesday April 17, 2018 @04:53AM (#16856602)

It is if the grandparent meant to disparage government IT projects (compared to corporate IT projects) -- which is a possible reading.

(It's also relevant because because we pay corporations with subsidies, tax cuts, tax evasion, research grants, public procurement, specialty laws favoring them, etc -- sometimes even more than we pay governments).

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Re:France’s government is building its own encrypted messeng... by briandear on Tuesday April 17, 2018 @05:21AM (#16856720)

SAIP has never sent an alert to me. But I get alerts from International SOS. So a third party emergency app does a better job than the official French app. Quelle surprise!

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Re:France’s government is building its own encrypted messeng... by dehef on Tuesday April 17, 2018 @08:51AM (#16857772)

Yes let not forget the unifed medical record.

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Re:France’s government is building its own encrypted messeng... by conradfr on Tuesday April 17, 2018 @03:09AM (#16856180)

And SAIP was budgeted for at least 78M€ ...

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Re:France’s government is building its own encrypted messeng... by Davidbrcz on Tuesday April 17, 2018 @03:24AM (#16856248)

That seems insane, even for the French government. Do you have a source ? I can't find anything with a 2 minutes search.

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Re:France’s government is building its own encrypted messeng... by hadrien01 on Tuesday April 17, 2018 @03:29AM (#16856266)

http://www.itespresso.fr/saip-application-alerte-attentat-ec...

That actually was the estimated cost; it grew at least at 81,5M€. (there's also a story in the article about one of the components of that seemingly simple app being 37 months late)

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Re:France’s government is building its own encrypted messeng... by Davidbrcz on Tuesday April 17, 2018 @03:33AM (#16856283)

81.5 for the whole project SAIP (broadcasting warnings on several mediums (phone, ad panels, radio, TV,...), not only the SAIP app.

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Re:France’s government is building its own encrypted messeng... by BrandoElFollito on Tuesday April 17, 2018 @05:40PM (#16862548)

Or the phones nobody in our gouvernement wants to use (slow, old tech, freezes alk the time).

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