France Is Building Its Own Google Workspace - With Django

Okay, confession time. I've been building Django apps for a while now. Every time someone asks "but can Django scale?" or "is Django still relevant?", I mumble something about Instagram and move on.

Then I found out the French government is ditching Microsoft and Google entirely. And building their own productivity suite. With Django.

Not a small internal tool. A full-blown alternative to Google Workspace. Docs, Meet, Drive, Slack, email - all of it. Open source. Already live.

Wait, What's Actually Happening?

France (along with Germany and the Netherlands) is pushing hard for "digital sovereignty." Basically, they don't want their government data sitting on American servers, subject to American laws.

So they built La Suite Numérique - a complete productivity ecosystem. And they open-sourced the whole thing on GitHub.

Here's what blew my mind: their docs app alone has 16,000+ stars on GitHub. That's not a side project. That's a movement.

The Apps They Built

I spent a couple hours going through their GitHub repos. Here's what they're shipping:

• Docs - Collaborative document editor (16k+ stars, 277 forks)
• Meet - Video conferencing powered by LiveKit (1.4k stars)
• Drive - File sharing and document management
• Messages - Collaborative inbox (think shared email)
• People - Team management application
• Projects - Project management tool
• Conversations - AI chatbot

And they're still actively developing. New commits every few hours. This isn't abandoned government software - it's alive.

Why Django Though?

This is the part that made me smile. They had every option available. Go, Rust, Node.js, whatever. Government projects usually go with "enterprise" solutions.

They chose Django.

Looking at their repos, I can see why:

• Django REST Framework for APIs
• React on the frontend
• PostgreSQL for the database
• Celery for background tasks

Sound familiar? It's literally the same stack I use. The same stack thousands of us use. Nothing exotic. Just solid, boring, production-ready choices.

When a government needs to build software that millions will depend on, they chose the "boring" stack. That says something.

Looking at the Code

I cloned a few repos to see how they structure things. Some patterns I noticed:

Clean Django Architecture

Their people app (team management) follows standard Django conventions. Models, views, serializers - nothing fancy. Just well-organized code.

# From their people app - straightforward DRF
from rest_framework import viewsets
from rest_framework.permissions import IsAuthenticated

class TeamViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):
    permission_classes = [IsAuthenticated]
    serializer_class = TeamSerializer

    def get_queryset(self):
        return Team.objects.filter(
            members=self.request.user
        )

Nothing revolutionary. Just clean, readable, maintainable code. The kind you'd write for any production app.

Shared Libraries

They built django-lasuite - a common library that all their Django projects share. Authentication, common utilities, shared components. Smart move for consistency across apps.

Real DevOps

Docker, Ansible playbooks, Helm charts. They're deploying this at scale with proper infrastructure. Not just "it works on my machine."

What This Means for Django Developers

Here's why I'm writing about this.

Every few months, someone writes a "Django is dead" article. Node.js is faster. Go is more efficient. Rust is the future. Whatever.

Meanwhile, governments are betting their entire digital infrastructure on Django. Not because it's trendy. Because it works.

A few things I'm taking away from this:

• Django scales. If it can handle government-level traffic across multiple European countries, it can handle your SaaS.
• The "boring" stack wins. Django + DRF + PostgreSQL + React. It's not exciting, but it ships.
• Open source matters. The fact that all this code is on GitHub? That's huge for learning and for building trust.
• There are real jobs here. Governments need developers. They're hiring. And they're using Django.

Try It Yourself

If you want to explore:

• GitHub: github.com/suitenumerique
• Official site: lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr
• Docs app (16k stars): github.com/suitenumerique/docs

The docs repo is especially interesting. It's a full-featured wiki/documentation platform. Self-hostable. MIT licensed. If you ever wanted to see how a production Django app at scale looks, this is it.

The Bigger Picture

Europe is serious about digital sovereignty. France isn't alone - Germany and Netherlands are collaborating on this. The EU is pushing for alternatives to American tech.

And they're building with Django.

For developers like me, this is validation. The framework I've been learning, the patterns I've been practicing - they're not outdated. They're being used to build critical infrastructure for entire countries.

Next time someone tells me Django is dead, I'll just point them to the French government's GitHub.

When you need reliability over hype, Django is still the answer. 16,000 developers starring a government Django project tells you everything you need to know.

Still learning Django. Still building with it. But now I know I'm in good company.

Have you checked out any of their repos? Found any interesting patterns? I'd love to hear what you spotted.