March 22, 2007 / T203
GEIPAN opens its public information portal
France; online archive
Witness account
GEIPAN opened an internet portal to make its work and case records more accessible to the public. This was a publication and transparency milestone within a programme that already existed, not the founding of French UFO investigation. Making investigation files searchable allowed readers to examine explanations and evidential gaps rather than rely only on short press reports or selected spectacular cases.
Public record
The contemporary GEIPAN opening notice and the 2006–2007 steering committee report date the opening to March 22, 2007. They are preferable for this milestone to a current CNES summary page that lists a website milestone as 2008. The archive developed over time and should not be described as the instantaneous publication of every French file.