Tribune. The use of consulting firms is too revealing of the functioning of the State and its relationship to private interests to be reduced to the sole subjects of non-compliance with the public procurement code and the offense of favouritism. Neither a “state affair” nor a “conspiratorial debate”, it stresses the need to further strengthen the transparency of procurement of intellectual services, to ensure that the influence of private interests on the conduct of public policies is always better regulated, as well as on the organization and functioning of the state.
The Senate commission of inquiry has made the correct diagnosis of these issues in a very well-documented report, and Transparency France supports the proposals it has been able to formulate:
Strengthen transparency in public procurement
The media interest in consulting firms has helped to highlight the technical but major subject of the supervision of public contracts. Indeed, the consulting services respond to calls for tenders launched by the State, and focus on the special system of framework agreements with purchase orders. However, these contracts, which are very general, do not make it possible to distinguish which services are requested and which are performed. As is often the case in the field of public contracts, information exists on the consultancy services carried out on behalf of the State, but these are neither consolidated nor centralized, which makes it difficult to understand them. The newspaper The world carried out this work, which should be provided by the State, but the result remains incomplete. It is therefore essential to advertise on the order forms of framework consultancy agreements, and to consolidate information on these public contracts to make them as accessible as possible, as recommended by the commission of inquiry.
Guarantee the traceability of consulting services
It was noted that the deliverables [le résultat concret d’un projet] provided to State services by service providers as part of their consulting activities often did not display any logo explaining their origin. A risky practice from a criminal point of view, since these markets could be requalified as labor loans.
The lack of traceability also leads to a risk of confusion between legitimate technical advice and opaque lobbying. Strategy consulting firms are in fact not representatives of interests. Moreover, they are not registered in the directory of lobbyists of the High Authority for the transparency of public life (HATVP). However, the commission of inquiry noted cases of proven attempt to influence public decision-making, which, in this case, would fall under an offense of omission to declare representation of interest. To ensure that the recommendations of consulting firms respond only to the need expressed by the public purchaser and are not aimed at a legislative or regulatory modification, it is necessary to ensure the traceability of the services of consulting firms and the communicability of their reports via the Commission for access to administrative documents, as recommended by the commission.
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