Three major reforms will be announced in France this week. They all relate
to the management of the public service: it will become possible to lay off
any civil servant who will refuse two series of three propositions for a
different employment, initially in the vicinity, then remotely. It will
become possible to interest collectively entire services on objectives they
have set; and finally, it will become possible for senior executives of the
administration having exercised functions of general management to keep then
a higher pay than those who, in the same rank, have never reached management
responsibilities. These reforms, applied at first in the State public
service, will then be applied in the other public services, in the hospital
world and local authorities.
They correspond to the application by a Law of August 3, 2009 on careers in
the public service, of several reports of reforms, without the opposition or
the labor unions, probably then on holiday, showing; and without anyone
noticing that the dismissal of civil servants was already authorized by a
law of 1984.
Such reforms represent a real emergency: the public service employees are
more and more badly paid; politicians no longer trust their managers, more
and more often put under the supervision of independent administrative
authorities or coupled with a plethora of services from local authorities.
Whereas, at the same time, considerable new needs arise in education,
health, police, justice, the elderly, environment, research. They will
require increased mobility of staff, radically new skills and new
technologies.
To maintain today’s overwhelming feeling of very high quality and remarkable
efficiency of its services, the State must follow the movement of history,
creating the conditions for geographical, occupational, social and
technological mobility of its staff ; it must urge the departments of the
administrations to define better objectives and to keep their best managers.
If it does not reform thus as soon as possible, the French administration is
heading for disaster: it will soon no longer have the financial resources of
its missions and will have to transfer them to the private sector, without
the user finding the slightest advantage there.
It is therefore urgent to accelerate the implementation of the reforms that
began this week, while making the administration at the same time more just
and more effective. To succeed there, it will be necessary to better
associate trade unions (if possible competent and representative) in their
implementation, promote geographic mobility by organizing a national grant
for government housing; promote social mobility by easing internal
promotions and movements between State civil service and local; and finally
accelerate technological mobility, by hastening the implementation, still
embryonic, of major e-government programs.
At this cost, the State will be able to continue to exercise its primary
mission: ensuring national unity and identity.