State reform: Elisabeth Borne plays the simplification card

2023-05-09 19:23:36

Make public services “closer and more efficient”. This objective was posted on Tuesday by Elisabeth Borne. And they had also been in their time by his predecessors at Matignon under the first Macron five-year term. In fact, the Prime Minister is trying to relaunch the state reform project, the results of which have been slow to materialize since the election of the current President of the Republic in 2017.

An Interministerial Committee for Public Transformation was thus held on Tuesday, the first exercise of its kind since the summer of 2021 under Jean Castex. Next week, Elisabeth Borne is due to meet a group of 400 state executives to share the new roadmap. “It is a sequence of re-staging of the action of the government in terms of public services”, we recognize at Matignon.

Automation of exchanges

For several years, the government has been trying both to free public services from red tape and, above all, to make these changes visible to the general public on symbolic issues. “We need to better measure the results of our public policies, make them known and act accordingly,” said Elisabeth Borne.

To improve the “fundamentals of public services”, Elisabeth Borne wants in particular to simplify the procedures for ten important moments in the life of the French. This will concern five this year (“I am becoming a student; I am renovating my accommodation; I am losing a relative; I am returning from abroad; I am establishing my identity”).

The Prime Minister had already announced a few weeks ago that she wanted to drastically reduce the time required to obtain identity papers. It is also a question of instituting the automatic payment of the survivor’s pension after bereavement. Another example, 2,600 France Renov’ advisers will be trained to support the French. And, from 2024, from primary to high school, the payment of scholarships will be automatic.

Improve telephone reception

Among the other axes, the executive also wants to facilitate access to public services. The deployment of France services counters – where several public services are shared – will continue with the objective that 95% of French people live less than 20 minutes from one of these points. While the digitization of the 250 most important administrative procedures is about to be finalized, it is now promised to improve the level of user satisfaction.

Finally, Matignon wants to improve telephone reception – the telephone is the first contact channel for users for 43% of French people – with the promise that they will now be called back after making an appointment, as happens with private companies.

For this state reform to continue, a “civil service +” program to support agents is planned. The government also intends to renew the evaluation of the action of the prefects on the basis of a battery of criteria for the reform of the State – decided under Jean Castex – and even to extend it to the regional directors of the State.