Matrix for Public Sector: DINUM joins the Foundation as we launch a new forum!

🔗DINUM becoming the first government to join the Matrix.org Foundation

Today DINUM, the French Interministerial Digital Directorate, has officially announced that they were joining the Matrix.org Foundation as a Silver member and becomes the first government to join the Matrix.org Foundation!

This is particularly exciting news as it will hopefully set an example for other public sector organisations using Matrix to communicate, and there are many of them.

In France, Matrix is the basis for Tchap, the secure messaging system of choice for public officials. It was selected for its security, but also openness, transparency and sovereignty as it limits dependence on proprietary solutions from outside Europe.

With this support, DINUM is committed to:

• participating in the governance of the protocol and enhancing its quality, in conjunction with other user states (Sweden, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Germany...) and the open source business ecosystem;
• contributing to the development of the community versions of the various software components of the ecosystem, used by many public services;
• ensuring that its actions are part of a framework for sustainable investment in digital commons.

DINUM has been an active contributor to projects of the Matrix ecosystem for a while, including by providing improvements to the implementation of Sliding Sync, which optimises performance and user experience; as well as the development of a community version of a border gateway, which enhances the security of the communications between distinct organisations.

Stéphanie Schaer, the Interministerial Director for Digital Affairs says: “With this partnership, we are choosing to make a long-term investment in a strategic digital commons for the benefit of the European ecosystem. Matrix is an essential building block for secure and sovereign communication services. This sponsorship reflects our conviction that the digital sovereignty of the State requires direct investment in the commons.”

🔗Matrix for Public Sector

This announcement comes a few days after the second edition of The Matrix Conference. The Conference was held in Strasbourg (France), gathering about 300 attendees, amongst which more than a dozen public sector organisations, brought together by their use of Matrix as a sovereign, secure and resilient communication protocol.

The Conference saw two full days of public sector track, shedding light on the various exciting deployments of Matrix by these organisations. All the talks are already available for watching here, and will be soon published on the website, but you can find a list of the public sector related ones at the bottom of this post.

We also took the opportunity of having many representatives of these public organisations present in person at the Conference to officially launch a Matrix for Public Sector forum. This is the very first group of its kind that the Foundation sets up and already many other industries are asking for something similar. The group will be proposed to the Governing Board for approval to potentially become an official Working Group.

The goal of the Matrix for Public Sector forum is for the Foundation to bring together all public sector players who have already deployed Matrix or are looking to do so, and enable them to share knowledge, learnings and experiences, generally grow the usage of Matrix in the public sector, hopefully ultimately federating all these deployments into a proper Matrix network.

This seminal meeting gathered a dozen of organisations including representatives from France, the European Commission, Sweden, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Belgium, the UK and Romania. The discussion focused on the type of knowledge and learning could be shared as well as how to structure the group.

All this activity, concretising years of growth of Matrix in the public sector is a huge step forward for the ecosystem, and we are very much looking forward to enabling this group of users to grow. It is also great to start implementing new ways for the Foundation to support the ecosystem and we can’t wait to replicate it with other industries!

And again: Welcome DINUM!

Amandine

🔗Public sector talks at the Conference

Matrix for Public Sector, Amandine Le Pape, The Matrix.org Foundation

Trialing Matrix within the European Commission for resilient and sovereign communications, Nicolas Dubois, European Commission

Matrix French gov deployment: opening a private federation securely, Mathieu Velten, Direction Interministérielle du Numérique (DINUM)

Consolidating Germany’s administrative communication: Towards a joint Matrix-based architecture, Dominik Braun, Federal IT-Cooperation (FITKO)

Sweden’s Public Sector in Transition, Anna Engström and Kenneth Edwall, Försäkringskassan

Luxchat(4gov), Patrick Weber, the Luxembourg government

Secure communication leveraging the Matrix protocol for UNICC and its partners, Tima Soni, United Nations International Computing Centre (UNICC)

Supporting TF-X with Matrix: best practices and pitfalls, Jeroen Franssen, NATO ACT

The German BundesMessenger, Kai A. Hiller, BWI

No Desk Is an Island: Enabling Cross-Border Workspace Communication, Alexander Smolianitski, ZenDiS

Matrix’s role in the German Healthcare System, Marie Ruddeck, Gematik

Nationwide Rollout of Matrix-Based Instant Messaging (TI-M) for 74 Million Statutorily Insured Citizens, Jan Kohnert, Gematik

Medical Care over Matrix with Delay during a Simulated Moonwalk, Jan-Lukas Furmanek (FAU Erlangen; University Hospital Erlangen) and Aileen Rabsahl (European Space Agency)