---
title: "Laurence Houdeville (DGCL): \"AI is not magic\" — Marsanne Studio AI watch"
description: "The DGCL says it had to map and structure its data, including 7 million acts a year, before deploying AI."
url: "https://marsanne.studio/en/ai-watch/laurence-houdeville-dgcl-ai-is-not-36899b/"
lang: "en"
---

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Case study · 11 September 2026

# Laurence Houdeville (DGCL): "AI is not magic"

Original title, in French: “Laurence Houdeville (DGCL) : « L’IA n’est pas magique »”

**Publication**

IT for Business (France)

**Author**

Laurent Delattre

**Published on**

11 September 2026 · read in the page structured data

## Summary

Laurence Houdeville, head of the digital mission at the Direction générale des collectivités locales (DGCL), spoke at an IT for Business Matinale about the prerequisites for AI. Before deploying artificial intelligence, the DGCL had to map and qualify its information assets, which were poorly understood despite their volume (land-use planning data, local government finances, information on elected officials and civil servants). She cites the ACTES system used by prefectures for legality checks: seven million acts a year, with peaks of 30,000 a day. To make these unstructured documents usable, the DGCL built an ontology model, a semantic engine and a rules engine in Python. Houdeville stresses that AI requires indexing, structuring and interoperability of systems before it can deliver value, and is "not magic".

Summary based on the full text of the article.

[Read the article on IT for Business →](https://www.itforbusiness.fr/laurence-houdeville-dgcl-lia-nest-pas-magique-107081)

## Figures cited

-   7,000,000 acts/year
    
    Number of acts processed per year by the ACTES system
    
    French prefectures, legality checks, ACTES system
    
    > « La volumétrie donne le vertige : sept millions d’actes par an, avec des pointes pouvant atteindre 30 000 actes par jour. »
    
-   30,000 acts/day
    
    Daily peak of acts processed by the ACTES system
    
    French prefectures, legality checks, ACTES system
    
    > « La volumétrie donne le vertige : sept millions d’actes par an, avec des pointes pouvant atteindre 30 000 actes par jour. »
    

## Classification

**Country**

France

**Company size**

All sizes

**Industries**

Government and local authorities

**Companies**

DGFiP (cited), DGCL (Direction générale des collectivités locales) (deploys AI)

**Keywords**

data governance, interoperability, public sector, unstructured data, indexing, ontology model

Entry written by Marsanne Studio from the cited article, with the help of an AI model (claude-sonnet-5). The rights to the article and its illustrations belong to IT for Business and its author. Entry translated from French by Claude Sonnet 5.5.