“Administrative obstacles” to the CNRS? Pierre laughs yellow. “I have an anecdote, you will quickly understand,” slips this sociologist in his sixties, who preferred to remain anonymous. The researcher works for a mixed unit, the best in terms of administrative headaches. “I have four supervisory institutions, so four different accounting systems, four mission software, four HR platforms, and of course nothing interoperable”.
A year ago, Pierre got the green light from his superiors for a new project: to analyze how certain patients suffering from rare conditions are treated. A mission of a few months, all that is most banal, for which he obtained 120,000 euros, and was authorized to recruit a research fellow, on a fixed-term contract. “I had to write about fifty pages of forecasts and scenarios. Then go back and forth in front of validation juries, and wait months for the answer”, squeaks the researcher. The anecdote has still not started.
Here it is: more than 6 months after his recruitment, and despite the availability of funds, his recruited project manager has still not been paid. “There, we went from frustrating to unbearable”, slips Pierre. One of his administrative managers realized that one of the European rules on recruitment had not been respected. Procedure invalidated. Money blocked. To prevent his employee from leaving, the researcher had to dip into his personal research funds. “And I’m not talking to you about the deadlines for getting my travel or my computers reimbursed, I gave up”.
“State of critical tension”
Similar stories, the 1,100 units of the CNRS, are full of them. Absurd rules, impossible deadlines, procedures that bite their tails… By dint of administrative layers and controls, the institution would have become completely ankylosed. It is its Scientific Council that says it: responsible for enlightening the management, this assembly of around thirty members has split a “White Book” on the subject, made public at the end of May, and since then strongly commented on by the French scientific community.
The document describes officers in “a state of critical tension” and “increasing exasperation”. The “administrative framework” would increase from year to year. Yet already busy with their work, researchers take more and more time on these purely organizational tasks, despite their incompetence in this area. What affect the working atmosphere, which has become “highly anxiety-provoking”. So much so that the scientific Council worries that burnout and depression are on the rise, and the institution’s reputation and performance are at risk.
“Everything must be stamped triple, assures Lydéric Bocquet, co-rapporteur of the White Paper. Each researcher must report and justify his activity to his laboratory director, who himself justifies the work accomplished to a regional CNRS delegation for validation, which itself even solicits the general management.” Physicist among the most eminent in the country, member of the Academy of Sciences, this professor at the College de France believes that given “the gigantic challenges to be accomplished, whether on the environment, energy, health”, we must “let the researchers work”.
The White Paper takes up a well-known observation, denounced from forums to conferences. However, he aroused the anger of the president of the CNRS, Antoine Petit. In an email sent to his senior executives, which L’Express was able to consult, he “dissociates himself” from what he considers to be a “pamphlet”. “This White Paper is not based on any scientific approach worthy of the name”, he criticizes. The Scientific Council’s finding would be “unworthy”, “stigmatizing” or even “caricatural”, and would not take into account the institution’s efforts in this area. An end of inadmissibility, in short, pronounced by simple email.
End of inadmissibility
Enough to leave the members of the Scientific Council speechless. “Contrary to what the management puts forward, we are not trying to pit researchers against administrators, but to unite against absurdity”, regrets Lydéric Bocquet. “Our leaders do not seem to realize the seriousness of the problem. This text, the result of many interviews, is only a preliminary work. But it describes the opinion of a majority, including administrative staff, He is also very affected. The obstacles are general, recurrent, and sometimes structural or old”, adds Philippe Balcou, physicist specializing in lasers, second rapporteur of the document.
Since the 2000s, French research has operated by project. No more annual budgets. Like the Americans or the British, blue-white-red coats must go through selection processes overseen by the National Research Agency. At the same time, scientific activity has also been Europeanized. Similar institutions have been created at Union level; the interlocutors multiplied. Finally, the CNRS had to go digital, a transition that is not without a few hiccups. Faced with these upheavals, administrative budgets have been reduced, instead of being increased.
If “simplification” work was carried out, it would in fact have had the opposite effect, adding procedures to the procedures according to the Scientific Council. “As projects have to be selected more harshly, more files are also needed, and therefore more agents to process them. By trying to save money, we create costs. And this is true in all public institutions , not only at the CNRS”, warns Laurent Coste, of the SNIRS-CGC union. “Today, administrative positions are repulsive, and are often provided by short contracts, while research needs long-term follow-up”, abounds Philippe Blanc, representative of Sgen Cfdt.
An additional brake on French research
These dysfunctions alone do not explain the slowdown in French research – the country now ranks 10th in the world, when it was 6th in the early 2000s according to a report by the High Council for the Evaluation of Research and Higher Education, published in 2021. This decline is mainly due to the colossal investments of the competition, China in the lead. But the international contracts lost or simply not entered due to administrative delays weigh down these disappointing results a little more.
After increasing the budget in 2020, the government has embarked on a vast project aimed at reorganizing the French scientific ecosystem. A report was submitted at the beginning of June to the Minister of Higher Education and Research Sylvie Retailleau, by Philippe Gillet, vice president of economic affairs at the École polytechnique de Lausanne. It proposes in particular to strengthen the administrations of the establishments, to grant fixed envelopes to facilitate routine projects, and to develop “research support infrastructures”. In other words: to help researchers find their way around the various project validation circuits.
But not everything goes through financing and optimization. At the CNRS, representatives and unions also denounce a distrust vis-à-vis the staff, and a control strategy that goes well beyond the thousand administrative sheets. A permanent tightening of screws, which some link to the gigantic fine of 70 million euros that the European Commission had demanded from the institution in the 2010s. For lack of sufficient monitoring, the CNRS could not justify the time devoted to European projects. An episode that would have tensed the managers. “Some of them considered the researchers as ‘fraudsters'”, a priori, regrets the white paper of the Scientific Council.
If the Scientific Council of the CNRS approves the proposals submitted to the government, it also and above all calls for the organization of a large round table, to discuss the relevance of these ideas, in practice and to ensure that the actors in the field are more listened to. More broadly, the body wishes to generalize the establishment of feedback from scientists. “To free ourselves from our shackles, we will have to connect the highest level of the State, and the actors in the field. For the moment, this dialogue does not exist”, deplores Philippe Balcou.
More confidence, autonomy and dialogue, this is the recipe for performance, assures the Scientific Council of the CNRS. And to take the example of the United States, which for example decided to empower researchers, instead of forcing them. As part of the government’s reflections, the Academy of Sciences has also shared its proposals to simplify the organization of research. The first one ? Consult more scientific advice.