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.
