Maarch and the Government of Benin Join Forces to Digitise the Country’s Public Administration

A long history

Since 2016, under the leadership of President Patrice Talon, Benin has placed digital technology at the heart of its strategy to modernize the State.

The digitalization of administrative services quickly became an essential lever for efficiency, transparency, and closeness to citizens. As early as 2021, the ASIN (Agence des Systèmes d’Information et du Numérique) led the widespread rollout of the free, open-source Maarch Courrier solution, which specializes in the electronic management of administrative mail.

The rollout of Maarch Courrier now extends to all Ministries, Prefectures, City Halls, institutions of the Republic, and public agencies and companies.

It’s interesting to note here, from a comparative perspective, the scope of ASIN’s authority — it both selects and oversees the implementation of Benin’s digital ecosystem, whether at the central or local administrative level.

This role and these extensive powers, both in terms of the range of institutions covered and the centralization of strategic decision-making, differ significantly from the service-offering approach that defines the strategy of similar agencies in France or Europe.

As a result, this initiative — praised for its rigor and impact — has led to an impressive number of Maarch Courrier instances being deployed from 2022 to the present:

• 20 out of the 21 ministries in Benin
• 11 out of 12 prefectures
• 27 out of 77 city halls
• 10 public agencies and companies

As such, Benin as a whole stands as Maarch Courrier’s largest reference deployment, with more than 25,000 registered users!

A partnership that cements the use of new Maarch technologies and products across an entire government

After several years of use, ASIN wisely chose to partner more closely with the publisher in order to better meet the specific needs of its users.

Maarch Courrier is free, open-source software, which enabled this wide-scale rollout. However, the expertise needed to adapt it and fully meet Beninese needs required the publisher’s support.

For example, Benin has equipped itself with a public key infrastructure (PKI), the standard foundation for signing secure official administrative documents, which needs to be connected to Maarch Courrier.

Similarly, the specific components of the qualified electronic signing platform with timestamping in version v24 of Maarch Courrier are essential for this integration.

There are also plans to integrate an AI engine developed in Benin, capable of drawing on the country’s legal texts.

Finally, beyond the obvious needs around correspondence management, ASIN is extremely interested in the new Electronic Data Management (GED) software Maarch Digital Flow, which will make it possible to handle industrialized data processing needs: file management, electronic vault, forms, workflows.

There are also plans to use Maarch RM for long-term archiving.

The ASIN project team came to Maarch for 10 days of training, covering in-depth sessions that led to full technical and functional proficiency.

This highly practical, hands-on training also provided an opportunity to review installation and operating procedures in a containerized SaaS mode. We also covered and carried out version upgrades.

ASIN also completed technical and functional training on the new Maarch Digital Flow software.

The first use cases leverage the product’s ability to handle document management (GED) and back-office functions related to online administrative procedures: for example, managing e-services for the Centre National de Sécurité Routière (CNSR).

Hosting for all platforms is provided locally by the Société Béninoise d’Infrastructures Numériques (SBIN), which is also deploying the Maarch Courrier solution within its own departments, further strengthening the roots of digital transformation within the national institutional fabric.

Jean-Louis Ercolani, Founder & CEO of Maarch, welcomes this development:

“For the first time, Maarch is entering into a direct contract at the scale of an entire country. It’s a great source of pride to have reached this stage. Nothing compares to the joy of seeing a free and open tool serve thousands of public officials every day, as part of a coherent and structuring vision. We thank the Beninese government, and ASIN in particular, for their trust and foresight.”

For Marc-André Loko, Director General of ASIN, this partnership marks a key milestone:

“This partnership fits into our vision of a modern, efficient, and accessible public administration. Our collaboration with Maarch allows us to align technologies with the real needs of Beninese administrations, turning it into a strategic lever for the digital State we are building.”

Maarch, a subsidiary of Groupe Xelians (€90M in revenue, 800 employees), as a publisher/integrator of free software and a specialist in administrative processes, contributes its software building blocks and expertise to the group’s overall service offering for the digital transformation of the public sector.

Named Xelians Public Suite, this offering aims to provide public sector players with the full range of tools and services suited to their digitalization needs: multichannel capture, automatic reading and routing, cross-functional document management (GED), Electronic Mail Management (GEC), electronic signing platform, business connectors, electronic archiving, AI….