The French General Directorate of Public Finances (DGFiP) manages MedocDB, a critical infrastructure serving 40.7M taxpayers and managing euros in public funds. Originally running on Bull GCOS mainframes using COBOL, these systems were becoming obsolete, with temporary workarounds in place.
Rather than moving to costly mainframes or rewriting the entire codebase in Java, DGFiP chose a bold alternative: migrating their COBOL applications to modern Linux servers using the open-source GnuCOBOL compiler.
DGFiP selected Titagone for our proven ability to tackle unprecedented technical challenges and our expertise in compiler development and programming languages. Despite our limited initial COBOL experience, our deep understanding of language design, compiler architecture, and our track record of successfully modernizing critical systems made us the right choice. Our collaborative approach with open-source communities and ability to ensure sovereignty and security for France's financial infrastructure were decisive factors in this partnership.
DGFiP required a partner capable of navigating unfamiliar territory: Titagone had limited prior exposure to COBOL, and the task involved adapting a legacy C-based compiler and engaging with a new open-source community. The challenge was to ensure that the unique Bull GCOS COBOL dialect (critical to the administration's operations) would run reliably on a modern architecture without rewriting existing code.
Starting with a comprehensive audit of GnuCOBOL, Titagone extended the compiler to support the GCOS-specific dialect. Our team worked closely with the open-source community, ensuring that the solution remained fully compatible, maintainable, and aligned with community standards.
Today, GnuCOBOL serves as the cornerstone of DGFiP's modernized COBOL stack, demonstrating the impact of combining deep technical mastery, open-source collaboration, and pragmatic modernization. This solution provides technical sovereignty, empowering the administration to control and maintain its infrastructure without vendor lock-in.
“We are happy to contribute to improving support for the GCOS dialect in GnuCOBOL. This dialect is widely used in our administration, which has developed a substantial COBOL GCOS codebase. As we phase out GCOS systems, Linux-based COBOL is confirmed as the target, with GnuCOBOL as the cornerstone. A big thank you to the Titagone team for their support.”
— Olivier Blanc, DGFiP
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