France’s €257 Million Police IT Project Declared a Major Failure by the Court of Auditors

France’s Court of Auditors Denounces a €257 Million IT Fiasco

A decade after its launch, the French national police’s new case management software — Scribe-XPN — has been branded a “fiasco” by the Cour des comptes, France’s Court of Auditors.
According to a 500-page ruling revealed by Le Monde, the system, designed to simplify the drafting of criminal investigation reports, has cost taxpayers €257.4 million — and still doesn’t work properly.

Originally meant to streamline procedures and reduce paperwork for investigators, the software is now so inefficient that it reportedly takes 17 mouse clicks just to save a PDF file.

A Project Plagued by Dysfunction

Launched in 2015, the Scribe project was intended to replace an older system (LRPPN) used by the police and gendarmerie. It was later renamed Scribe-XPN after the national gendarmerie dropped out in 2016, describing the merger as “too risky.”

The Court’s rapporteur, Michèle Coudurier, criticised the project’s “poorly defined objectives” and a “fragmented governance structure” that blurred accountability. Management failures, unclear specifications, and a lack of oversight all contributed to its collapse.

Technical Failures and Daily Frustrations

The audit lists a long series of technical shortcomings:

The software cannot process files larger than 5 MB without heavy quality loss.
Images become unusable for prosecutors and judges.
The system is slow, unreliable, and not intuitive for investigators.

Police unions say these flaws translate into lost time — between 30 and 45 minutes per officer per day, reducing efficiency and morale.

Who’s Responsible for the Failure?

The ruling holds six senior officials accountable, including two former national police directors and two former secretaries general at the Interior Ministry. They are accused of breaching budgetary control rules and failing to ensure proper project oversight.

Tech giant Capgemini, the project’s main contractor — paid over €8 million — has admitted it failed to meet its “duty of advice and alert.”

The financial loss includes not only wasted development costs but also:

consultancy and maintenance contracts,
extended use of outdated systems,
and the productivity lost across police departments.

What Happens Next?

Despite its troubled past, the Ministry of the Interior relaunched the project in 2021 under the new name XPN, promising to fix its flaws and modernise digital police tools.
However, according to the Court of Auditors, full deployment won’t happen before late 2028 — meaning officers could be stuck with outdated systems for several more years.

Meanwhile, MP Antoine Léaument filed a motion on 6 March 2025 requesting the creation of a parliamentary inquiry into the fiasco — aiming to ensure transparency, accountability, and lessons for future public IT investments.

A Symbol of Public Sector IT Troubles

Scribe-XPN has become a case study in how poor planning and divided governance can turn an ambitious state digital project into a costly failure.
For French taxpayers, it’s another reminder of how public IT projects, despite vast budgets, often struggle under bureaucratic pressure and weak project management.

As the audit states bluntly: “The promises of modernisation have given way to confusion and waste.”