30 October 2009, 10:57

French Tax authorities switching to Thunderbird

According to a report in the French language publication 01net, the French General Directorate of Public Finance (DGFiP) is switching to Mozilla's Thunderbird email client for 130,000 users. The switch is happening as part of a merger of two French tax authorities which had different email systems, The Directorate General Tax (DGI) which used Lotus Notes and the Directorate General of Public Accountancy (DGCP) which used Microsoft Outlook. A source for the report says the department did not want the cost of renewing one or other the licences of the proprietary software and looked for alternatives.

It selected Mozilla's Thunderbird client with two added components to provide it's new email system. Mozilla's Lightning will be used to provide calendar support, while OBM from French open source development and services company Linagora will provide groupware and collaboration tools. OBM has been deployed with a number of government authorities in France, with 110,000 users in the Department of the Interior, 8,000 users in the Ministry of Culture and 3,000 users in the National Assembly.

(djwm)

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