Four months after the controversy over the use by the State of consulting firms, the government intends to respond by publishing the first rules which will govern the services entrusted to the private sector by the ministries from 2023. The Minister of Transformation and the Public Service, Stanislas Guerini, announced that the consulting missions entrusted by the State to private firms will be capped in principle at 2 million euros per project from 2023, during an interview to Agence France-Presse (AFP) published on Thursday 28 July. The government will disclose on Friday a new framework for recourse by the State to consulting firms for the period 2023-2027.
Services whose cost exceeds this ceiling will have to be the subject of a separate call for tenders, a procedure that the ministry hopes will be restrictive enough to convince the ministries to give up overly onerous missions. The Minister also wishes to limit the use of the same private provider to two contracts in a row. If applicable, the combined cost of the two assignments must not exceed the ceiling of 2 million euros.
The idea is to “provide a framework broadly defined in its principles and amounts”more of “transparency”as opposed to ” blurry “ which reigned until then on the recourse by the State to private service providers, explained Mr. Guerini to AFP.
New rules
In a very critical report, two senators in March defined the State’s use of consulting firms as a “sprawling phenomenon”. The two parliamentarians Eliane Assassi (CRCE group, with a communist majority) and Arnaud Bazin (Les Républicains group) had assessed the bill for consulting services at 893.9 million euros for the ministries in 2021. The average cost of most benefits identified in the report, however, amounted to tens or hundreds of thousands of euros, below the new ceiling of 2 million, therefore.
The two senators tabled a bill in June largely inspired by their report, which the minister promises to also submit to the National Assembly, since he considers it ” additoinal “ compared to the new framework about to be published.
In total, over the period 2018-2022, the State spent 226 million (excluding taxes) on consulting services “in strategy, organization and operational efficiency”, according to figures given by Stanislas Guerini to AFP. Under the new rules, the State wants to limit its consultancy expenditure to 150 million euros between 2023 and 2027, “with a maximum ceiling of 200 million euros – in case of need”.
“Mission by mission”
This reduction in expenditure is in line with the ” philosophy “ of a circular from Matignon published in January, emphasizes Stanislas Guerini. In this document, the former Prime Minister Jean Castex advocated for 2022 a reduction of at least 15% in expenditure linked to “intellectual services engaged in strategy and organization”.
If the minister of the public service points out numerous “convergences” with the authors of the senatorial report, its proposals do not however cover the IT consulting expenses of the State, which represent a considerable part of the bill paid for consulting services. The way to regulate the use of these IT services “is a question we should ask ourselves”he admits, the framework presented Friday being a “first response”.
The State will also undertake to publish “mission by mission” the amounts involved, the sponsor, the service provider and the title of the service, explained Stanislas Guerini. “If there must be non-publication, it is for reasoned reasons” as “defense interests”he nuanced.
Our selection of articles on consulting firms
They are invisible, but omnipresent… What is the real influence of private consultants in the conduct of state affairs? This is the burning question raised at the heart of the presidential campaign by the Senate committee on the influence of consulting firms on public policy, which delivered its report on March 17. In parallel, The world conducted its own investigation, based on testimonies, open sources and requests for access to documents, to try to measure the impact of these firms on Emmanuel Macron’s five-year term.
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