This is the original article from EU commission web site.
In 2004 French police forces switched to use Open Office on all their 90 000 desktops and made ODF format official for their internal exchange media. Firefox and Thunderbird were choosen for browser and mail clients.
In 2008 they installed Ubuntu on the first 5000 desktops, followed by 20 000 Ubuntu installation in 2011 and another 10 000 in 2012, in 2013 they installed another 2000 till mid of the year, so Ubuntu is installed now on more than 37 000 desktops in the police.
According to French police this reduced their total cost of ownership with 40%.
olimex 
Oct 04, 2013 @ 14:17:33
The only problem is that spyware issue now.
But that’s a good start!
Oct 10, 2013 @ 17:27:19
“The GendBuntu project originated with the end of distribution by Microsoft of Windows XP, and its inevitable replacement with Windows Vista or a later edition of Windows on government computers. This meant that the Gendarmerie would have incurred large expenses for staff retraining even if it had continued to use proprietary software.”
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu
“The only problem is that spyware issue now. :/” – well, ditching Windows, they got rid of American NSA (National Security Agency) from their computers for sure. And probably is a custom Ubuntu distro…