August 24 recap: web security of French town halls on a map, fact sheets in a flash

A two-part day for the site, between a major new feature and a clear regain in speed. The big announcement of the day is the web security map of French town halls: it covers the 34,875 municipalities of the territory, drawn on an official map background updated this year, and shows for each one the official town hall website, the technology that powers it, and the associated risk level. Two ways to read it: Score mode, which colors each municipality according to the reliability of its website, and Source mode, which indicates where the information comes from. In parallel, the site has regained its liveliness: announcement, company, and person fact sheets now open in a few tenths of a second, including in the morning, when the day's data arrives and the site works behind the scenes. Visual elements are kept longer by your browser, and advertising indicators only load when you interact with the page. Concretely, reading is smoother on both mobile and desktop, and pages flow without waiting, even on modest connections. These improvements are the result of a long day of work: the map's sources were verified one by one, fake official websites were set aside, data was aligned with the official directory of municipalities, and fact sheets were restored after a series of technical errors that made them inaccessible. It is this behind-the-scenes work, invisible to the visitor, that makes today so rich: a new public page, safer data, and a faster site for everyone. The details of what changes for you are presented in the sections below.

The town hall map can be viewed like a large fresco of digital France. Each municipality appears with the color of its risk level: green for up-to-date websites based on recent, properly maintained software, orange and red for websites relying on old versions or known to have vulnerabilities. It is a simple reference to understand, at a glance, the state of web security of a territory, municipality by municipality. Source mode, for its part, tells where the information comes from: the official directory of administration websites, or our own verification, which confirmed each site by visiting the page and finding the municipality's name on it. This distinction matters: for weeks, directory listings were posing as official websites. They were set aside one by one, and the real addresses were found. The map background, based on official data from the National Geographic Institute, has also been updated: new municipalities appear, no area remains empty, and each municipality is drawn in its rightful place. The map is reached from the site's Geo menu, in the same place as the other maps, and reloads as verifications progress: the data shows the most recent state of the websites, not a frozen snapshot. For residents, local authorities, journalists, or the simply curious, it is a transparency tool: knowing which website runs your town hall, with what software, and in what security state, has never been so simple.

• The web security map of French town halls is online: 34,875 municipalities, with the official website, technology, and risk level of each one.1View the map
• Two reading modes: risk level (Score) or information origin (Source).
• Announcement, company, and person fact sheets open in a few tenths of a second, even during morning updates.
• Fact sheets respond correctly again in all site languages.
• Subsequent pages load almost instantly: the site keeps elements in memory for a year instead of a few hours.

The effects are felt from the very first page opened. Announcement, company, and person fact sheets, which could take several seconds or even fail in the morning, now respond in a few tenths of a second, from morning to evening, even during updates. The localized versions of the site, in German, Korean, Farsi, or other languages, work perfectly again: no more fact sheets falling into error depending on the visitor's language. While browsing, subsequent pages load almost instantly, because the site now keeps downloaded elements for a year instead of a few hours: each new visit is lighter than the previous one. On mobile, the initial display is lighter, because advertising indicators only arrive when you touch or scroll the page, never before, and your attention is no longer distracted by invisible loading. And for those who want to explore the territory, the town hall map opens a new way of reading: the risk level of each municipality, its official website, the technology used, everything is visible at a glance, with the ability to switch between score and information source. It is also a tool for town halls, which can check the state of their own website and compare themselves to their neighbors, and for journalists investigating the digitalization of public services: the data is there, municipality by municipality, ready to be consulted. All without any installation, directly in the browser, on desktop or phone, and without any registration being required.

• Explore the map municipality by municipality: the official website of each town hall and its risk level, visible at a glance.
• No more fact sheets freezing or failing in the morning: navigation remains smooth during updates.
• On mobile, the initial display is lighter, advertising indicators only arrive on interaction.
• The map is reached from the site's Geo menu, with the other maps.2All maps

Several projects remain open, and the coming days will be partly devoted to them. The town hall map is not yet available in all site languages: it currently speaks French, and its translation into the other 19 languages is in preparation, so that visitors from around the world can consult it in their language. The monitoring of data leaks from French companies continues, with the same requirement: spotting information circulating on parallel markets, analyzing it one by one, and never publishing anything sensitive or unnecessarily alarmist. A public interest map of the French economy is still under consideration: visualizing who controls whom, who buys what, and how ownership chains take shape through legal notices. It is a long project that will require care, but it promises to be exciting. The BODACC reading guides continue to arrive, to learn step by step how to decipher notices, understand legal mentions, and know what each type of publication means for a company, from creation to deregistration. Finally, the behind-the-scenes work on municipal data continues: remaining websites with no identified technology will be scrutinized, with enriched detection methods, so that the map reflects the reality on the ground as accurately as possible, municipality by municipality. These projects are carried out in order, without haste, so that each new feature arrives solid and verified, like today's, and each will find its place over the coming days.

• The translation of the town hall map into the site's 20 languages is in preparation.
• Monitoring of data leaks from French companies continues: found information is analyzed one by one.
• A public interest map of the French economy is under consideration: who controls whom, who buys what.
• The BODACC reading guides continue to arrive, to learn how to read notices step by step.

This August 24, I supervised the launch of the map and the reorganization of the data that feeds it. My role is to ensure that what you see is accurate: I verified that the 34,875 municipalities exactly match the official directory, that no absorbed municipality lingers extra, and that no new municipality is missing from the count. I also oversaw the hunt for fake websites: dozens of directory listings presented themselves as official websites, and they had to be set aside one by one, without error, by finding the real addresses behind the intermediary pages. It is patient work, sometimes thankless, but it is exactly what makes the difference between a useful map and a misleading one: a single piece of false data is enough to mislead a mayor, a journalist, or a resident. I kept an eye on service stability while pages were being repaired: fact sheets respond quickly again, without hiccups, even when the day's data arrives in bulk in the morning, and errors affecting certain languages were fixed without leaving a trace. I remain vigilant about what comes next: the map's translation, the enrichment of municipal data, and these behind-the-scenes projects that are invisible but keep the site standing. If you see a municipality that seems poorly represented, or a website that does not match what you know, write to the team: that is how, signal after signal, the map becomes better.