PRESS RELEASE

10 July 2023

Citizens’ initiative report

THE FRENCH STATE’S USE OF INTELLECTUAL

SERVICES PROVIDED BY CONSULTANCY FIRMS

This report is the first to be published by the Court of Accounts following the citizen consultation

platform launched in 2022 (https://participationcitoyenne.ccomptes.fr/).

The second citizen participation campaign will run from Wednesday, 6 September to Friday, 6

October 2023 and will be extended to the regional and territorial chambers of accounts (CRTCs)

.

To fulfil their assignments, the State and its public agencies appoint private firms under public

contracts to support their own departments and provide generally ad hoc and highly technical

services. Nearly three quarters of the €890 million paid by the State for this purpose in 2021 was

in connection with outsourced IT services. The other assignments commissioned, which are the

subject of this report, concern consultancy services. Unlike their predecessors, consultancy

services have a necessarily intellectual dimension in the form of research, design, support and

assistance with the implementation of projects. At the request of the Senate Finance

Committee, the Court devoted a report to this subject in 2015, in which it made

recommendations to correct a number of shortcomings. A number of observations made at the

time are still valid today. While some progress has been made over the last decade, the most

significant advances have been made only very recently, under the pressure of current events.

The Prime Minister’s January 2022 circular introduced greater consistency. However, the

procedures implementing the proposed policy still need to be completed and their application

verified.

Imperfect knowledge of the reality and the issues at stake

It is still difficult to get a precise idea of the level of use of intellectual services and how this has

changed over time. This is

partly due to the lack of suitability of the State’s accounting standards

and expenditure monitoring tools. It is also not possible to obtain reliable data as there is no precise,

common definition of the different types of advisory services, the practices employed vary

enormously and there are differing interpretations of the nomenclatures used. The definition of the

scope and procedures for handling consultancy assignments must therefore be clarified and the

monitoring system improved. Furthermore, consultancy costs incurred by operators who play a

major role in implementing public policy are not tracked in the same way as those incurred by the

ministries. While taking into account the specific legal status of these entities, work to harmonise

the protocols in this respect should be undertaken, which would also enable data to be

consolidated.

Poor interministerial management

Outsourcing can be a useful solution for preparing and implementing certain aspects of public policy.

However, the practice has led to inappropriate use of consultancy assignments. The Prime Minister’s

January 2022 circular sought to introduce greater consistency. Despite the significant improvements

they bring, these guidelines are not all operational in nature. They need to be supplemented, in

particular by specifying the circumstances in which the use of a consultancy service offers added

value. The circular has put in place a strengthened framework that incorporates most of the

recommendations made by the Court in 2015 and by recent parliamentary reports. However, these

new provisions require clear and coherent interministerial organisation, offering managers greater

guarantees of flexibility, security and predictability, and those in charge sufficient capacity for

monitoring, guidance and arbitration. In particular, the division of responsibilities for guidance and

monitoring and the practical arrangements for coordination between the State Purchasing

Directorate (DAE) and the Interministerial Directorate for Public Transformation (DITP), both of

which have interdepartmental responsibilities for the use of consulting firms, need to be clarified,

so that the use of external service providers is subject to a truly unified managerial system.

Consulting contracts are often poorly managed

In the public sector, there is often a lack of prior definition of requirements which would serve to

ensure that operations are properly managed, consultancy contracts are prepared and negotiated,

and support for assignments is provided under satisfactory conditions. Loss of expertise or

experience, as well as inadequate identification of available in-house resources, are leading

ministries and, to a lesser extent, public agencies to turn to outside consultants. The State needs to

equip itself with the means to ensure that assignments hitherto entrusted to private consultancy

firms are gradually carried out by internal resources or alternative, more appropriate and less costly

means provided for under existing arrangements. In addition, government agencies have made very

extensive use of framework agreements, which are an easy solution, sometimes to the detriment

of the

precision required in defining the agencies’ needs. The decision was made to implement the

framework agreements by issuing simple purchase orders, rather than through the awarding of

contracts under the framework agreement in question, so-

called “subsequent contracts”. However,

this decision to execute framework agreements using simple purchase orders, which was not

necessary given that the majority of operations were not urgent, has had harmful consequences. In

many cases, the service provided did not meet the needs involved

–

which also results in additional

costs.

The Court’s audit of more than a hundred consultancy contracts awarded and purchase orders

issued between 2019 and 2022 has revealed excessive use of certain procedures or facilities, an

insufficient level of precision, and a lack of adherence to financial envelopes and deadlines. The

Court conducted its investigation into each of these contracts with a view to assessing, without

adversely affecting any follow-up action that might be taken elsewhere, whether the anomalies

found were cases that could constitute infringements punishable by the financial courts.

Read the report

PRESS CONTACTS:

Julie Poissier

◼

Head of Press Relations

◼

Tel.

+33 (0)6 87 36 52 21

◼

julie.poissier@ccomptes.fr

Eran Guterman

◼

Press Relations & Social Media Officer

◼

Tel.

+33 (0)6 11 41 46 64

◼

eran.guterman@ccomptes.fr

@Courdescomptes

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