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France has an undeserved bad reputation for this stuff. As a french citizen, I'm amazed to see how easy it has become to do anything administrative online, with

France has an undeserved bad reputation for this stuff. As a french citizen, I'm amazed to see how easy it has become to do anything administrative online, with great tools such as France Connect that allows a single login method for any administrative tool.

azemetre 1y ago
Do you happen to now if France has public jobs for software devs or is it more like a governmental agency (which I guess is also a public sector job but feels different)?
- makeitdouble 1y ago
  AFAK each agency/entity manages its staff and can hire accordingly. For the big project, my mental image is a public call for proposal, followed by one of the bigger groups (e.g. Cap Gemini) coming up with an initial solution that gets deployed. From there it becomes a mix of the public agency staff doing the day to day operation and maintenance, potentially including small bug fixes and updates, and external contracting again for wider range feature additions or changes like system wide security compliance.
leesalminen 1y ago
Like distributing an iOS app in France that uses encryption? What a pain in the ass that is. The bureaucracy was painful enough that we just removed from the French App Store and when someone complains we tell them to write their representatives to stop with these misguided laws. Excuse me, monsieur, do you have a license for that math?
- aborsy 1y ago
  Some apps have refused to distribute in French store for this reason, such as Syncthing apps Mobius and Synctrain.
- orwin 1y ago
  You can't sell encryption in France if you haven't proved it actually is strong encryption and not a rot13 or something, which is actually a _very_ good idea. Could the implementation be better? Knowing french admin, 100% yes, but complaining about the law itself is, in my opinion, misguided. This is an overall good law that doesn't came from nowhere.
bambax 1y ago
Most things don't work, and "France Connect" is really bad (it doesn't even accept non-ascii letters for your name or surname! which is insane coming from an official initiative of the French Government; they should at least know how to use the French language). Anything from the department of education is also abysmal, mostly broken, and needlessly convoluted. The one amazing thing that works is the taxes collection system. The French tax code is incredibly complex with hundred of special cases; yet the online system to declare revenues is perfect: super clear to use with excellent instructions, never broken (even at the end of a period where usage peaks must be insane) and with no errors. I don't know who constructed this but it's proof that the French gvt can make good software when they really care (ie, when money's at stake).
- aucisson_masque 1y ago
  C'est vrai pour les particuliers mais vas voir le côté entreprise de impôts.gouv.fr et tu vas pleurer. C'est des sous menus dans des sous menus, si t'as plus qu'une page ouverte a la fois ça te déconnecte de l'autre, ...
  - tmtvl 1y ago
    > It's true for individuals, but go look at the enterprise side of impôts.gouv.fr and you'll cry. It's submenus within submenus, if you've got more than one page open at a time it disconnects you from the other,... I know HN doesn't appreciate snark, but isn't that kind of what you can expect from government websites anyway?
  - pyrale 1y ago
    It used to be the same for the individuals site some years ago, but they overhauled it bits by bits. From what I saw, the company site is also getting slowly overhauled, although it's not as high priority. > C'est des sous menus dans des sous menus, si t'as plus qu'une page ouverte a la fois ça te déconnecte de l'autre, ... The reason for that is that the site is basically a progressive merge-and-overhaul of many existing administrations and their sites.
- femtozer 1y ago

azemetre 1y ago

Do you happen to now if France has public jobs for software devs or is it more like a governmental agency (which I guess is also a public sector job but feels different)?

makeitdouble 1y ago
AFAK each agency/entity manages its staff and can hire accordingly. For the big project, my mental image is a public call for proposal, followed by one of the bigger groups (e.g. Cap Gemini) coming up with an initial solution that gets deployed. From there it becomes a mix of the public agency staff doing the day to day operation and maintenance, potentially including small bug fixes and updates, and external contracting again for wider range feature additions or changes like system wide security compliance.

leesalminen 1y ago

Like distributing an iOS app in France that uses encryption? What a pain in the ass that is. The bureaucracy was painful enough that we just removed from the French App Store and when someone complains we tell them to write their representatives to stop with these misguided laws. Excuse me, monsieur, do you have a license for that math?

aborsy 1y ago
Some apps have refused to distribute in French store for this reason, such as Syncthing apps Mobius and Synctrain.
orwin 1y ago
You can't sell encryption in France if you haven't proved it actually is strong encryption and not a rot13 or something, which is actually a _very_ good idea. Could the implementation be better? Knowing french admin, 100% yes, but complaining about the law itself is, in my opinion, misguided. This is an overall good law that doesn't came from nowhere.

bambax 1y ago

Most things don't work, and "France Connect" is really bad (it doesn't even accept non-ascii letters for your name or surname! which is insane coming from an official initiative of the French Government; they should at least know how to use the French language). Anything from the department of education is also abysmal, mostly broken, and needlessly convoluted. The one amazing thing that works is the taxes collection system. The French tax code is incredibly complex with hundred of special cases; yet the online system to declare revenues is perfect: super clear to use with excellent instructions, never broken (even at the end of a period where usage peaks must be insane) and with no errors. I don't know who constructed this but it's proof that the French gvt can make good software when they really care (ie, when money's at stake).

aucisson_masque 1y ago
C'est vrai pour les particuliers mais vas voir le côté entreprise de impôts.gouv.fr et tu vas pleurer. C'est des sous menus dans des sous menus, si t'as plus qu'une page ouverte a la fois ça te déconnecte de l'autre, ...
- tmtvl 1y ago
  > It's true for individuals, but go look at the enterprise side of impôts.gouv.fr and you'll cry. It's submenus within submenus, if you've got more than one page open at a time it disconnects you from the other,... I know HN doesn't appreciate snark, but isn't that kind of what you can expect from government websites anyway?
- pyrale 1y ago
  It used to be the same for the individuals site some years ago, but they overhauled it bits by bits. From what I saw, the company site is also getting slowly overhauled, although it's not as high priority. > C'est des sous menus dans des sous menus, si t'as plus qu'une page ouverte a la fois ça te déconnecte de l'autre, ... The reason for that is that the site is basically a progressive merge-and-overhaul of many existing administrations and their sites.
femtozer 1y ago