Erwan Le Noan is a partner of the consultancy firm Altermind, member of the scientific and evaluation council of the Foundation for political innovation (Fondapol).
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In Marseille, the President of the Republic did not mince his words. If the State will come to the aid of the Phocaean City, it is on condition that it puts order in its management. Denouncing "
absenteeism, pearl strikes
", he addressed the mayor of the city to castigate "
a problem with [his] municipal staff
". He warned: the state will not tolerate that "
some come to take their tithe
" by taking advantage of collective funding without working fully. The effort must be shared.
Absenteeism in the public service, particularly territorial, is a known difficulty. The Court of Auditors denounced it, in particular in a 2016 report in which, through its civilized vocabulary, the scandal of agents working less than what the law provides and being absent too often was revealed.
The introduction of a one-day waiting period in the civil service from January 2012 had drastic effects in this regard, by reducing short-term sick leave to a large extent.
The INSEE had measured that the two-day absences had consequently decreased by 50%;
and the Ministry of the Civil Service indicated that "
in certain local authorities, the number of one-day work stoppages fell by 60% between 2011 and 2013
".
In this regard, the president pointed out precisely, but implicitly, that the real insufficiency of the administration is not due to a deficit of means, but of efficiency and performance in the use of its resources.
Erwan Le Noan
More broadly, it is the agents' working time that deserves to be questioned.
The Court of Auditors thus complained about "
an annual working time rarely in accordance with the regulations
", noting that most communities distribute so many days off that local officials work an average of 1,562 hours per year, instead of and place of the regulatory 1607 (in total, only 20% of communities would respect this minimum threshold).
Departing from the legal regime (and, moreover, from the private sector), these excesses contribute to squandering public money, allowing a minority to benefit from inadequate management, to the detriment of their fellow citizens.
In this regard, the president pointed out precisely, but implicitly, that the real insufficiency of the administration is not due to a deficit of means, but of efficiency and performance in the use of its resources. How else to explain that France holds the record for public spending in Europe and yet does not offer public services that stand out very clearly from their counterparts by their flagrant superiority? On the contrary, from the inadequacies of National Education to weaknesses in terms of security, including the difficulties of the hospital or the desertification of certain geographical areas, many elements are accumulating to confirm the idea that certain public services are well. below what one might expect.
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Worse yet: our country is experiencing the extraordinary paradox of a record abundance of public funding, coupled with growing dissatisfaction among its officials.
Police, health workers, teachers and even soldiers are increasingly protesting about the poor quality of their working conditions.
In short, we spend more, to obtain uncertain results and disgruntled agents. Put simply, the French are not getting their money's worth. This sad observation is certainly not for nothing in the ambient social unrest. The subject of the effectiveness of public action is thus a key stake in our collective future, for economic reasons (public spending, already often less efficient than private spending, weighs all the more on activity as it is underperforming) but also social (the inefficiency of public services results in a lack of efficiency among the most fragile citizens) and therefore political (the weakening of public services materializes the collapse of the State and weakens the trust that citizens can place in it,even feeds the anger).
The revolution in public action must be total: the quality of service to users must only matter - and take precedence over the legal nature of the service provider.
Erwan Le Noan
With this offensive speech on the reform of public action in Marseille, the President of the Republic has achieved a masterstroke: in an alliance with a mayor from the left, whose recent election makes it possible to freely criticize past management and its results, he promised to initiate the reform of public action - a subject often brought to the right, by materializing it through local tracks - the urgency of the situation justifying to overcome traditional constraints and open up daring projects, such as the autonomy of schools or the working hours of civil servants.
It is a first step. We must go further, by first recalling that there is no equality between the concepts of public services, monopoly and public service. Private companies, regularly put in competition, can perfectly well be excellent providers. In fact, this is already often the case in our country. The revolution in public action must be total: the quality of service to users must only matter - and take precedence over the legal nature of the service provider.
By this intervention, Emmanuel Macron seems to have shown a desire to tackle the administrative monster.
Perhaps he also indicated that the question of the effectiveness of public action will be a key subject of the presidential campaign and that he intends to seize it, even confiscate it, at this boring start to the period. electoral.
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His opponents will question him: what has he done until now? They will be able to show that the reform of public action has been the major absence of the five-year term - the staff of the public service growing dynamically and public expenditure spinning as before. They will be able to point out that the initiatives carried out have generally increased centralization, unlike what should be done. They will be right, but that will be insufficient to convince. Denouncing the government's new interest in reform would be futile - like a market competitive process, do not elections serve to encourage political leaders to renew and enrich their offer when the hour of consumer choice approaches?
If they want to convince, the candidates for the right-wing primary will therefore not be able to content themselves with denouncing the supposed weaknesses of the LREM majority. They must themselves come up with a more attractive political offer, by rethinking public action. For them, they have to be, for the most part, local elected representatives: the management of their communities will be a valuable indicator. Only the credibility of their past acts can usefully enrich their promises and convince voters.
