Six people involved in the Scribe software program were fined a total of €18,000 by the Court of Auditors on Friday. Intended to modernize the drafting of criminal procedures by law enforcement, this project, launched in 2015, was ultimately abandoned after six years of development. The financial court determined the damages amounted to €30,21 million, while the overall cost associated with the program was estimated at €257 million.
Scribe was initially intended to be a joint tool for the police and the gendarmerie. The latter having quickly withdrawn from the project, the National Police Directorate General took over project management, while the technical implementation fell to the department responsible for technologies and information systems for internal security. Two former police directors and two former secretaries general of the Ministry of the Interior were among the six people referred to the litigation chamber.
A "serious collective error" in the project's execution
The Court of Auditors identified a series of shortcomings in the monitoring, organization, and management of the program. The judges considered these failures to constitute a collective fault that contributed to the failure of Scribe, without, however, being able to determine that a particular person or decision was the primary cause. The same analysis was applied to the €30,21 million in damages: the court was unable to attribute a precise portion of these losses to each individual responsible.
The penalties imposed therefore vary considerably depending on the individuals involved. Two officials were fined €6,000 each, two others €4,000, while the last two were fined €1 each. The decision concludes the legal proceedings surrounding an IT project that has become emblematic of the difficulties encountered by the State in managing certain large-scale digital programs, even though Scribe was intended to play a central role in the daily work of investigators.
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