Made in Paris
By Todd Asher, Media & Digital Strategies, Bloomberg Associates
It takes years and vast resources for urban planners, architects, and engineers to plan and build cities.
With the rise of tech, technologists have been working behind the scenes with government leaders to build our cities more effectively putting their resident first and making it easier, simpler and more enjoyable to live in cities.
The City of Paris has been building an online city for the past 15 years. To meet the needs of their evolving city, the Paris Information Technology team created Lutece. Named for the ancient Roman word for the city that sits where Paris now stands.
Lutece is part operating system and part content management system. It allows the City to create high quality websites quickly and it helps the city save around €3 million per year on maintenance costs.
On June 5th and 6th, Bloomberg Associates participated in a forum hosted by the City of Paris and supported by Moss Labs. Municipal IT leaders and international members of the open source community all came together for two days to talk about how to support the development of Lutece and to discuss how to expand its value to cities around the world.
I sat down with Paris’ Chief Information Officer, Nejia Lanouar, to talk about why Paris created an in-house solution and how other cities can benefit from what they’ve developed.
Todd Asher: Can you describe to us a bit about Lutece?
Nejia Lanouar: Lutece was developed in the early 2000’s as an open source software platform, which is very important to us. It runs over 400 of Paris’ websites, including those of the 20 arrondissements (districts) of the City.
Todd Asher: Why is it important that Lutece is an open source software platform?
Nejia Lanouar: Open source allows contributions by many people to build a system, to solve a problem. France is an open society and we want our systems and our government to be open and transparent as well. We hope that other cities will help us build on the strong foundation that we have created. That’s why we offer it for free so that everyone will benefit.
Todd Asher: How have you been able to be so effective with Lutece and open source software in Paris.
Nejia Lanouar: It’s due to the support we have from the very top, from Mayor Hidalgo and First Deputy Mayor Emmanuel Gregoire. They are dedicated to serving the residents of Paris and involving them in the decision making of the City. We want to create two-way discussions and engagement with all of our citizens.
Todd Asher: Bloomberg Associates is working with the City of Paris to help expand the use of Lutece. Are there other cities that are currently using Lutece?
Nejia Lanouar: The City of Lyon, France also uses Lutece for nearly 75 percent of its online services. We are very pleased that other cities see the value of Lutece and we are very excited at the prospect of expanding our Lutece city partners internationally.
Todd Asher: What’s the value of using Lutece over other commercial products that are available on the market?
Nejia Lanouar: Lutece offers far greater control and flexibly than other solutions. Each time the City has a need for a website a public procurement is made. Commercial companies will also bid on these contracts. Lutece is compared to these other solutions in terms of functionality, and cost, and 80 percent of the time Lutece is selected. We also perform satisfaction surveys with the departments who use websites built with Lutece and they consistently perform well for the public and city government.
Todd Asher: What are some tangible ways that Paris uses Lutece?
Nejia Lanouar: The City’s participatory budget portal is built entirely using Lutece. It’s the largest participatory budget in Europe, letting citizens decide how to spend €100 million per year. Lutece also provides online access to the City’s inventory of public housing. Paris’ residents can manage their digital identities with Ma Compte (My Account) or file a complaint or make a service request using Dans Ma Rue (On My Street) which are also powered by Lutece.
Todd Asher: What are your hopes for Lutece in the future?
Nejia Lanouar: My hope is that Lutece is adopted by many cities around the world. We have already translated the software and the documentation in English. As other cities build and share plugins, these will serve to improve the lives of many people around the world. We are very fortunate to have the creator of Lutece, Pierre Levy, as part of our team. I want for Paris to be a model for others and I want Paris to benefit from the innovation and creativity of cities across the globe.
More information about Lutece can be found at fr.lutece.paris.fr . Cities that are interested in using Lutece are encouraged to contact the City’s ID department at lutece@paris.fr.
