Notaire in FR
What this register publishes today, what is missing, and the smallest change that would move it up.
What was found
Two details make this worth reading even if you never touch French property. First, the national directory is not a courtesy: a decree requires the council’s bureau to draw it up, keep it current and publish it on its website, and if it fails at any of those three the Minister of Justice may order it to comply. A published register with a ministerial backstop for not publishing is rarer than it sounds, and some of the office data reaches the national open data portal. Second, and more interesting for this lab: France already runs a database of notaries’ signatures. It exists so that apostilles and legalisations can be issued, within three working days of the necessary information appearing in that base. A state that already maintains a signature register for its public officers is not being asked for a new idea when it is asked to publish keys. It is being asked to point the idea at the public.
What it publishes
| Check | Answer | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| A public page per licence | Yes | Gives a reader something to look at and a checker something to archive and attest against. |
| A bulk export | Partial | Lets a consumer hold the whole list instead of fetching one licence at a time, and lets anyone hash it. |
| Machine readable | No | A CSV or JSON rather than a page built for a browser. Decides whether checking can be automated at all. |
| Signed | No | Makes the file impossible to forge or mirror convincingly. Nothing reaches grade A without it. |
The next step
Export the list
A page per licence is already most of the work. What is missing is the same data as one file, at a stable address, refreshed on whatever cadence the register already runs. That is tier A of RVW-5 and it moves this row to grade B.
A grade describes a register, not the authority behind it and not the quality of its supervision. An authority can run an excellent register and still sit at grade D because it is a search form.
If this row is wrong, it gets corrected with the correction published beside it. The index is useful only if it can be argued with. Tell the lab.