The Anticor association, known for fighting corruption and tax evasion, has revealed having filed a complaint against Microsoft before the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) on May 2. The American company is suspected of having been favored in the awarding of a public contract whose aim is to modernize nearly 800,000 workstations within the National Education system.
Microsoft and national education in the sights of the CNIL since 2020
It all starts on September 9, 2020 when the chained Duck publishes an article revealing several information about the call for tenders launched by the Ministries of National Education and Higher Education. For an amount of 8.3 million euros, Microsoft was then chosen to equip National Education with 800,000 new workstations equipped with more than a hundred Microsoft software references.
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The lawyer representing the National Free Software Council (CNLL), Maître Souffron, had been consulted. He said at that time that ” this call for tenders poses a problem, because the technical specifications of a market cannot refer to a brand or a patent when this is likely to favor or eliminate certain operators » .
In addition, François Aubriot, member of the CNLL Board of Directors and head of the “public procurement” monitoring unit, reacted to the announcement of this agreement: ” The State prefers to pay rents to Microsoft rather than turn to French companies perfectly capable of providing them with the services requested and which do not practice tax optimization »
Anticor files a complaint against Microsoft and its agreement with National Education
This is not the first time that the CNLL has denounced a contract with a non-European technological player, considering that the gap between the discourse around digital sovereignty in Europe and the reality on the ground is not narrowing. In 2016, a similar contract (between Microsoft and National Education) was also the subject of litigation, but the council’s arguments failed to convince the competent authorities.
For the Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL), using software from American companies involves taking a considerable risk in terms of the protection of personal data, given the transfer of data to the United States. . At present, no agreement has been reached to succeed the Privacy Shield to facilitate the transfer of data while respecting the GDPR framework.
In turn, Anticor is stepping up to the plate by considering that the tendering procedure ” seems to have been built for the exclusive benefit of the American company, even though French free software companies offer solutions with equivalent functionalities and performance “. Thus the association filed a complaint with the PNF, in the same way as it had requested the prosecution for the hosting of the Health Data Hub within Microsoft Azure.
This complaint had a significant impact since the government decided to put a stop to the project and soon launch a new call for tenders in order to find a buyer.
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