Betting on the Commons: How the French State Builds Websites with Wagtail
In France, government websites must be secure, accessible and follow the official design system — but most are built separately, at high cost, with no space to share what teams learn. Sites Conformes is our answer: a pre-configured Wagtail installation that lets administrations create compliant .gouv.fr websites, now powering more than 60 of them.
But this talk is not about the code. It is about the why. Why the French state is investing in open-source tools as a matter of digital sovereignty, why we believe Wagtail is the right foundation for a government CMS, and how we turned a one-off project into a genuine digital commons, through the “Club Contributeurs”, a model where public bodies co-fund the platform and steer its roadmap together, each bringing not just money but their own expertise: security, eco-design, deployment at scale.
We will share what works, what is hard : convincing decision-makers, sustaining shared governance, living up to our name, and what we hope other countries can take from this approach.
About Emma Ghariani
Emma Ghariani is the Director of the Open Source and Digital Commons division at the French Interministerial Delegation for Digital Affairs (DINUM). She is focused on developing and supporting meaningful public-commons cooperations in France and Europe.
