But why are the agents in Grand Poitiers who clean the tags equipped with a tablet or a smartphone? Answer: because the local urban community has been developing an application since 2019 that allows them to provide information on their interventions online. “Previously, they had to go to the office in the morning to pick up their mission sheet, then return there at the end of the day to entrust it to a colleague, who manually entered the data of the achievements”, recalls Sébastien Burette , responsible for the digital environment division of community businesses. A saving of time and a reduction of paperwork which justified the deployment of this application towards other services, such as the maintenance of street furniture or the maintenance of green spaces.
This innovation could have been confined to the Vienne prefecture. But Greater Poitiers was selected in 2021 by the Territorial Incubator. A program of the National Agency for Territorial Cohesion (ANCT) which aims to provide all communities with digital services created locally.
In concrete terms, a budget of some 650,000 euros over two years, from the recovery plan, made it possible to hire three additional developers in order to improve the ergonomics, accessibility, security and interoperability of the Pictavian application. *. “In return, we must make the code open source so that this project can be reused freely by other public actors. It is a fine example of pooling local achievements which avoids everyone having to reinvent the wheel”, rejoices Pierre-Yves Brault, director of information systems for Greater Poitiers.
“Starting from the real needs on the ground, we make sure to have a useful and effective solution in terms of public expenditure”, summarizes Thibaud Chambert-Loir, in charge of cross-functional deployment within the Incubator of the territories, which accompanies these different projects. In other words, it’s a way for small communities with little means to have tools used by the largest cities. “The ambition is to create digital commons”, confirms Pierre-Louis Rolle, director of strategy and innovation at the ANCT.
Public “intrapreneurs” in the field
To facilitate the transition of territories and involve more public officials, the agency is also experimenting with the establishment of local territory incubators. The urban community of Pau Pyrénées, the departmental council of Seine-Saint-Denis, the metropolis of Lyon or the urban community of Le Havre Seine Métropole are part of the network heads. The goal? Deploy a method and support worthy of the start-up universe in order to encourage territorial technical teams to design innovative solutions, in line with their concrete needs. In Le Havre, a second promotion of public innovators was announced this year. An investment committee, made up of elected officials and members of general management, selected four teams from around ten volunteer applications from agents.
The winners are relieved of their usual mission one day a week for three months to work on their project. Coaching is also provided to them by beta.gouv.fr, the state digital services incubator. “This makes it possible to rethink public action starting from the user and the reality on the ground”, welcomes Mélanie Briand, in charge of innovation mission within the metropolis of Seine-Maritime.
Several solutions have emerged from this system: an offer to reuse funerary monuments at the end of the concession; a local voluntary carbon contribution platform or even a service to fight against energy poverty through better information on the aid available to renovate one’s home. So many future territorial digital start-ups…
*The term “pictavien” is reserved for the city of Poitiers, in order to avoid ambiguity with “poitevin”, which can also concern the region of Poitou.