Back to list
Faced with multiple challenges and a major crisis, the social housing sector is transforming and innovating. A well-steered digital strategy is at the heart of these challenges. For several years now, Adrien Coussa, CEO of Abraxio, has been consulting with numerous IT leaders at social housing organizations to support them in addressing their management challenges. He shares his perspective on the changes taking place in the sector.
The digitalization of social housing organizations in France is now a major issue. While it has made considerable progress in recent years, it has now taken on a whole new dimension. The answer to the provocative question posed in the title is, of course, yes! Whether it’s a question of rental management, maintenance, access to services or the use of data, in particular to optimize resources management, digital technologies have revolutionized the sector, delivering a wide range of services for both managers and residents. Social landlords have invested and continue to invest in these technologies, according to their means.
Social housing plays a central role in our societies. It is a sector of innovation. It’s also a sector in crisis, where digitalization has accelerated, partly as a result of the crisis. However, much remains to be done, not only to make up for a persistent lag, but also, and above all, to ensure that IT departments succeed in supporting their organizations in their transformation drive, in the implementation of their regulatory obligations and general interest mission: to improve the day-to-day lives of the 10 million occupants of social housing in France.
Originally, the sector’s Digital transformation was to some extent imposed by events and political decisions:
- The Elan law of November 2018 encouraged the concentration of players and the emergence of heavyweights, with – as we have seen – increased capacity for action and investment. It supported digital Deployment, under the heading of improving the living environment and simplifying procedures.
- The social housing crisis is also due to a drastic reduction in the financing capacities of social landlords: funding laws have put a strain on their resources, soaring interest rates have increased their indebtedness, and efforts to renovate the energy efficiency of existing properties, while necessary, have come at the expense of the production of new low-cost housing.
- Finally, by mandating the renovation of the most energy-intensive housing to achieve the goal of carbon neutrality by 2050, the Climate and Resilience Act of August 2021 has definitively linked the issue of energy efficiency to the digital transition. Integrating energy management tools is in fact an essential means of meeting the challenge of reducing energy consumption in 2.0 buildings.
At the heart of the system, the CIOs of public housing agencies—who generally didn’t even go by that title—have undergone significant changes in both their organization and their approach. The sector lacked a culture and understanding of digital challenges. That is much less true today.
Adrien Coussa, General Manager, Abraxio
New IT Departments in a Redesigned Organization
These challenges have prompted social landlords to reinvent themselves, with the largest of them leading the way. In these heavyweight organizations, at the heart of the reactor, the information systems departments, which generally didn’t even have that name, have undergone significant changes, both in their organization and in their posture. The sector lacked a culture and understanding of digital issues. This is much less true today:
- The role of the IT manager, which initially involved simply managing an organization’s IT equipment, has evolved: IT departments—sometimes comprising as many as 100 employees—have been established, with increased financial resources and a revised role within the organization.
- The role of these new CIOs is now strategic: by setting a vision and implementing 3- or 5-year roadmaps that support the organization’s overall strategy, the CIO has shifted his or her role.
- The overall organization has been rethought, based on a rapprochement between IT and property management, from renovation to construction. Up until now, these two distinct departments – one recent, the other historical – had operated in silos: by digitizing the HLM portfolio, it became necessary to bring the business lines together, by linking up project portfolios. And to learn to work together.
- As an educator who is more visible and faces greater challenges, the CIO must now demonstrate his or her effectiveness. He has to show senior management how what he is putting in place contributes to the achievement of objectives, while at the same time controlling expenditure and adapting to shorter cycles than in the past. The IT acculturation he or she is called upon to lead also requires him or her to instill greater agility in processes and operating modes.
Generative AI for a closer relationship with tenants
These upheavals are underway, and transformation is underway on all fronts. The future will see many more changes. Generative AI, which is being talked about in all business sectors, offers new opportunities in social housing, both for service quality and tenant relations, and for optimizing related management costs.
In the social housing sector, the tenant is at the center, with a major challenge for his landlord: to continuously improve service, while optimizing relationship management time. An intelligent chatbot, with a conversational language model connected to a knowledge base, will enable the asset manager to improve the quality and response times to tenants, by automating some of these responses. In this way, the landlord gains in responsiveness and precision, for greater satisfaction, and optimizes its management, by connecting information between them.
What’s more, AI opens up a whole new world of possibilities for controlling energy consumption in buildings. Fed with real-time information, its use opens the door to anticipating consumption peaks, enabling immediate adjustments for optimum energy efficiency. Tenants, informed of their consumption via conversational tools, can adapt their behavior to save energy, while landlords can monitor and optimize consumption on a global scale. This use of AI can thus contribute to a significant reduction in the ecological footprint of buildings, as well as their financial footprint.
Generative AI can also help to reduce the digital divide through improved accessibility for as many people as possible: when you’re far from the digital world, it’s easier to chat with a chatbot on your mobile than to surf the Internet. This issue of proximity is linked to the budgetary and environmental issues analyzed above.
In conclusion, the digital transformation of social housing, supported by the ELAN law, is reshaping the landscape of the HLM sector. Local authorities, in the wake of smart cities policies, and tenants, in search of modernized services, are driving this movement. Innovation, always present in this sector, is finding a new lease of life thanks to digital maturity, which has become an essential differentiating factor.
However, this massive digitization brings with it crucial challenges in terms of data storage, structuring and security. The move to cloud computing, while offering flexibility and scalability, poses data sovereignty challenges. Sensitive tenant data must be protected against cyber-attacks and privacy breaches. Advanced data management systems are needed to organize, analyze and exploit this information, turning data into valuable insights.
Securing data is a priority. Organizations need to adopt robust measures, including encryption, strong authentication and regular audits, while complying with regulations such as the RGPD to guarantee the protection of personal data and maintain tenant trust.
Successfully navigating this digital transition presents a unique opportunity for social housing organizations to reinvent themselves, improve tenants’ daily lives, and address the environmental and economic challenges of the future. In a few years, it will be time to take stock to assess the successes of this digital transformation, measure the impact of the innovations spearheaded by social housing IT departments, and confirm their contribution to more efficient and sustainable rental management.