Luxembourg's Ministry for Digitalisation has announced the launch of the Luxchat4Gov application, a real-time communications tool for fast exchange between professional contacts within the civil service, made available to around 25,000 State agents.
During the official presentation of the application on Tuesday 23 May 2023, Marc Hansen, Luxembourg's Minister Delegate for Digitalisation, pointed out one of the main strengths of Luxchat4Gov, namely that of being operated entirely within Luxembourg-based data centres. In addition, the communications exchanged in the application are end-to-end encrypted. The application’s properties allow the public sector to have a secure means of communication, without the use of users’ personal data. No one other than the sender of a message and the people with whom that person has communicated can read those messages or access any attached files.
According to the Ministry for Digitalisation, the national sovereignty in terms of data management that Luxchat4Gov gives it an advantage over the messaging systems owned by private companies, often located on other continents, and which may exploit their users' data, modify the rules at their convenience and send advertisements to users in order to fund their product.
Luxchat4Gov users will find all the usual communications features: text and voice messages, audio and video calls, sending files (documents, photos, videos...), etc. There is also the possibility of editing messages already sent, of creating polls or of sharing one's position with one's interlocutors thanks to Geoportail.lu. The application is available on Android, iOS, macOS and Windows.
Since Luxchat4Gov is built on the Matrix protocol, which is based on open standards as well as free software, it is compatible with any other Matrix-based system.
The public sector application will also be made available to the general public and businesses in a few months’ time, once private operators launch the “Luxchat” application.
