Earlier quoted context omitted.
Something akin to it very likely. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel is one example of early IT done by government owned enterprise.
Minitel is just one project, a successful one but eclipsed by the rest of the IT world. Does that mean the French government could have done what SV did? Why didn't they?
It was the whole model that was doomed. Basically to set up a service on Minitel, you had to ask permission from France Telecom. You had to go to the old guys who ran the system, and who knew absolutely nothing about innovation. "It meant that nothing new could ever happen. Basically, Minitel innovated from 1978 to 1982, and then it stopped," he says. But others are less critical. Valerie Schafer, Thierry's co-author, says "the way Minitel is now fobbed off as risible and old-fashioned" is unfair. "People forget that many of the ideas that helped form the internet were first of all tried out on Minitel. Think of the payment system, not so different from the Apple app-store. "Think of the forums, the user-generated content. Many of today's web entrepreneurs and thinkers cut their teeth on Minitel," she says. "The world did not begin with the internet."