Éric Caire pleads that his Ministry of Cybersecurity and Digital has nothing to do with the setbacks of the SAAQ. He even feels that he should have received praise for his part of the project.
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“It’s an SAAQ project, designed by the SAAQ, managed by the SAAQ, so it’s up to them to explain what’s going on and what they’re going to do to resolve the situation,” he said. declared Wednesday in an interview with TVA Nouvelles.
The Minister considers that he cannot have anything to blame himself for in this file, since his ministry did not exist when the creation of the SAAQclic platform was authorized in 2018.
“The Ministry of Cybersecurity arrived on January 1, 2022, he stressed. So the CASA project had already been rolling for 4 years when we arrived.
Remember that if the Ministry of Cybersecurity and Digital has indeed just blown out its first candle, Éric Caire was Minister Delegate for Digital Transformation from 2018 to 2022.
After setting up his ministry at the start of the year, then going through an election campaign, Éric Caire finally contacted the SAAQ a few months ago, and he was then assured that everything was fine.
“In the fall, I made requests for information, and the indicators we were shown were green. So I am extremely surprised at the situation,” he said.
Everything is beautiful under the sun
Furthermore, the Minister maintains that it is important to distinguish between the SAAQclic project, which comes under the SAAQ, and the government authentication service (SAG), used by the SAAQ and which will constitute the “gateway” to the other services digital government.
“I want to say that at the level of the SAG, there is no problem. What we see is that people who don’t use it say it’s complicated, but people who use it say: ”finally, it’s not that complicated, it’s done well, it’s done quickly,” he said.
“In fact, we should have received praise for this project, but that’s not what happened visibly,” he added.
It is that despite the considerable number of accounts that have been opened, there have not yet been any security accidents to date. “And it’s probably not because there aren’t people who have tried it,” he said.
The SAAQ’s problems could be explained by the three-week closure in February, believes the minister, because it “created a pile of late files”. Added to this is “a number of bugs to deal with”. “The accumulation of all that makes us have the situation we have,” he explained.
Support
The role of the Ministry of Cybersecurity in this file is limited, according to Éric Caire, to providing “support” to the state-owned company. “We can help them, we can offer them resources and solutions, but it remains a project that is carried by the SAAQ,” he observed.
As the digital transformation is set to spread to other government services in the coming months, the Minister is drawing lessons from the past few weeks.
“We have to understand that now, IT projects, we no longer do mammoth projects,” he said.
The government authentication service is, in his view, a “first block” in the edifice of digital transformation.
“Other blocks will arrive, recalled Mr. Cairo. The digital wallet, secure communication, change of address, etc. We divided the project into several blocks, we deliver a first block, we make sure that it goes well, and after that we build on solid foundations.