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Comment by rubenfiszel | Hacker News Reader

Palantir is a particularly bad example, it being american. France care a lot about sovereignty and would never allow (and for good reasons) an external entity to have that much control. It probably did ask for a contractor on an "appel d'offre" to build this so it's the same but with a french actor.

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We, French, do actually have seriously competent people in charge of central government IT infrastructure. Local governments not so much and that is an euphemism, but French central government doesn't cut corners about that. Also, ANSSI is among the world's best in security auditing and they take very diligently their public service role of sticking their noses into your information system if you are legally classified as an "Opérateur d'Importance Vitale".

Also, f*k Palantir. No one wants such vampire squids anywhere near the crown jewels.

Palantir is not trusted, at all anywhere outside the U.S.

It's not trusted in the US either.

Also competent technology companies like Thalès (Gemalto).

Unclear to me whether that comment is sarcastic or not. I'd vote for the former, but many purchasers don't.

Good to know, thanks for the information. It's just that I am French (living abroad), and when I use administrative websites, I often encounter forms and situations that have clearly been coded "avec les pieds." Like the forms on embassy websites to requests passports, that instead of providing options to get appointments even 6+ months in the future, force the user to refresh the page multiple times per day in hope of finding a slot. Same thing with "RDVPermis", their new driver license application platform, where people are using bots to refresh the page every 20 seconds.

That's not security-sensitive, but it's clearly not optimally designed and I wonder who decides that it's better design to let people go mad refreshing the page - instead of letting them book even 6 or 9 months later, which sucks, but at least have a pleasant experience.

I also overall wonder why so many procedures in this country are so slow (such as passport appointments for people living abroad), and why nobody is figuring out a way to make it all faster in this age of technology. Surely, a private company with a startup mindset could automate and find ways to expedite all these things that have no reason to be so slow. I deal with bureaucracy in the US, and UK, and everything is usually at least 5 times faster and easier.

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