INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND SYSTEMS Technology serving FRANCE 98 A few figures Partnerships "NO MARGIN FOR ERROR": Conversation with Philippe VERVEER INTERNET: Open to the World INFO FRANCE 98 : A real electronic News Agency TECHNOLOGY SERVING FRANCE 98 From ticketing to the Internet Website, from operational management to the media information system, information technology, representing around 10% of the French Organising Committee's budget (220 million French francs) is without question one of the cornerstones of FRANCE 98's success. And here the CFO is relying on the expertise of four of its eight Official Suppliers: EDS, Hewlett-Packard, Sybase and France Telecom. For nearly five years now, those in charge of the FRANCE 98 IT systems-both the CFO team and its partners-have been responding to a challenge that boils down to three issues: integrating, equipping and transmitting. A gigantic brief. And, by its very nature, extremely complicated. Before it started developing the IT strategy essential to the organisation of an event on the scale of the World Cup, the French Organising Committee's priority was to find partners who could deliver the goods in terms of the services needed for preparing for FRANCE 98. In particular, the CFO targeted candidates with experience in big sporting events and large-scale projects. The successful bidders were EDS for technologies concerning information, Hewlett-Packard for the provision and maintenance of hardware, Sybase for software management and France Telecom for transmission. As soon as they had been selected, all four companies buckled down to serious work (see inset), with the CFO's IT team (nine in all, three of them departmental heads) interfacing between the users, as well as keeping tabs on the whole operation. "In order to have even more flexibility, we wanted a light structure," says Philippe Verveer, the CFO's IT Director. "Our strategy consisted in having everything carried out by our partners' teams." That of EDS contained more than 80 people all working full time on the World Cup project. IT's field of application is enormous: ticketing, accreditation, Volunteer management, protocol, the organisation of transport and accommodation, CAD (computer assisted design), and of course the management of information systems for the media (the Intranet, operational during the competition in the press centres) and the public (Minitel since December 1995, and the Internet Website, which opened on 6 May 1997). As can be seen, IT plays a vital role in all the key areas. Not forgetting the "daily dose of IT" in the work of all the CFO's regular employees. And for this, no fewer than 750 computers are linked up throughout France! A FEW FIGURES concerning IT: 2 000 computers, of which 450 are dedicated to INFO FRANCE 98,the World Cup Intranet information system 600 printers 100 local networks 200 servers 2 50 Volunteers 44,000 working days have been taken up on the IT project since 1993 concerning the Internet: The site will be able to handle 25-50 millions hits per day 4,500,000 people had visited the Website at the end of April 1998 250,000,000 hits were clocked up (at the end of May 1998) Visits from more than 160 countries The press kit has been downloaded more than 20,000 times 400,000 screensavers downloaded 100,000 video viewings since December 1997 No fewer than 450 PCs will be set up in the press rooms for journalists.