Novell has won a contract to supply the infrastructure software that will allow 35 million French taxpayers to file their returns online.

The nine million euros three-year project with the French Tax Authority, DGI, represents Novell's largest eGovernment project in Europe to date.

This system allows all users - from employees to taxpayers - to be centrally managed; saving set-up and maintenance costs, improving customer service and increasing accuracy.

Over the next year the applications will be rolled out to partner organisations before French taxpayers will be allowed to log onto the system in the early part of 2003.

Adrian Humbel, business development director at Novell, said the DGI had selected Novell's software because it was able to scale up to 35 million users.

Using the Web lowers administration costs and Novell's software allows access rights to be managed centrally an securely with a single sign on to Web applications for users, he explained. ®