A sovereign email address for the residents of a city

For some time now, many towns and cities have been providing their residents with an email address, name@mycitymail.com. The service is offered in the same way as a postal address, free of charge and often free of advertising. Today, local authorities are aware of the need to reduce their expenditure and are offering this service in premium mode to residents who are now prepared to pay a reasonable subscription fee for an efficient, secure and sovereign service.

Premium service for the benefit of all

Providing an email address can be considered a public service.  In this way, local authorities help to combat the digital divide and enable their citizens to benefit from a modern communication tool that is independent of access and service providers whose sole aim is to maximise the revenue from their users. Municipalities and regions are seen as legitimate sponsors of such projects, which, thanks to open-source technology, have an appropriate solution with an adaptable business model. This messaging service for citizens also becomes a very interesting territorial marketing tool to be exploited through the virality of electronic communications. From the citizen's point of view, the development of Internet services encourages Internet users to look for services close to their centres of interest. Their home town or region and local life are among their main concerns. The allocation of a name@mycitymail.com address is a real plus for citizens, who see it as a way of asserting their identity and strengthening links and communication with public services.

Find out in this use case how this service can be made more accessible to local and regional authorities without any financial or technical effort. Users have become aware of the importance of the sovereignty of their communication, with an email address that is independent of access providers or GAFAMs and that reflects their territorial affiliation, just like a postal address.

In this case study, Alinto presents its many years of experience in this field: the open-source citizen email address service called P-Mail was launched in 2004 in partnership with the City of Blanquefort in France. Today, this service continues to find an audience, as does the city of Bremen in Germany since 2012, which went premium a few months ago.