To fight against fraudulent public services, the government intends to impose the use of “.gouv.fr” on 75 “priority” sites of the administration by 2026, indicated Tuesday the services of the Prime Minister and the Interministerial Digital Department (Dinum).
“The extension of the .gouv.fr domain name must take place before July 1, 2025 for communication sites and before January 1, 2026 for administrative procedures sites”, specifies Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne in a circular dated of July 7 and published on Tuesday.
The Government Information Service (SIG) and the Dinum specify in a press release that this injunction, less restrictive than a law or a decree, “should make it possible to fight against online scams or misinformation by offering a distinctive character in the URL (the address of the site visible in the search bar, Editor’s note) of the site consulted by users, and guarantee the official and authentic character of public services. »
“Priority” sites like Parcoursup
Among the 75 sites deemed “priority” by the government, some already end in .gouv.fr, such as those of the ministries of Education, the Economy or the Interior. Others, however, such as the government site (gouvernement.fr) or Parcoursup (parcoursup.fr), have not yet adopted this extension, which has been accessible only to government sites since 1995.
These differences between sites increase the risk of fraud committed by Internet users who create sites from scratch with URLs comparable to those of government sites, for malicious purposes (theft of data or money, for example).
Planned training
To improve the readability of government sites, half of the 21,000 civil servants of the State specializing in digital technology will have to be trained in the design and accessibility of digital public services by the end of 2023, and all of them by to 2027, detail the GIS and the Dinum.
Each ministry is also ordered to appoint, no later than September 1, 2023, a “design manager” responsible for implementing the circular.
Unequal accessibility
Despite the commitments of several successive governments, the accessibility of government sites remains unequal, particularly for people with disabilities.
In November 2022, Civil Service Minister Stanislas Guerini said he wanted to make 80% of the 250 most common digital administrative procedures accessible to people with disabilities by the end of 2023, and 100% by 2027.
At the end of 2022, only 43% of these procedures were partially or totally accessible to people with disabilities.