Assume, reassure and stifle controversy. On January 5, 2021, at the Ministry of Health, we are working on the “EDL” (elements of language) to oppose to the many questions from the press after information revealed by the site Politico : the American firm McKinsey has been commissioned to support the vaccination campaign against Covid-19. The internal e-mails of the time, that The world was able to consult, summarize the two key messages of the executive’s response: the consultants did not interfere in “choices of a political and health nature” and these missions strictly respected the “contracts” and the “procedures” in force.
Government communication was not enough to extinguish the fire. The revelations about McKinsey and the vaccination have since been followed by a long series of reports about the weight taken by private consulting firms in the public sphere in recent years. The publication of a Senate report on this phenomenon “sprawling” in the spring disrupted Emmanuel Macron’s campaign and led to the opening of two legal investigations by the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) in the fall.
Each time, the same answers are given: everything is « super clair et transparent » in the interventions of consulting firms, still assured, at the end of November, the spokesman of the government, Olivier Véran. ” I fear nothing “said Emmanuel Macron on November 25, six months after saying: “If there is evidence of manipulation, [que] it goes to the penal! »
According to information from Monde, the government was nevertheless alerted at the end of 2021 to abuses in the use of consulting services, in particular in the context of the health crisis. On December 2, 2021, the Court of Auditors sent the Ministry of Health an unequivocal warning: many of these services are provided in “problematic conditions”. These grievances are detailed in a larger report on spending related to the health crisis, which The world has procured. This 90-page document, which had not been made public so far, sheds new light on the interventions of consultants during the pandemic.
A haste criticized by the Court of Auditors
The first finding of the Court of Auditors is known: the use of consulting firms has increased tenfold during the health crisis. More than 50 million euros were spent in 2020 and 2021 for IT services on behalf of the Directorate General for Health (DGS), to which are added 13 million euros for consulting services.
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