The report of the Court of Auditors was eagerly awaited. This Monday, July 10, the public institution published a report on the State’s use of private consulting firms to define public policies, particularly within ministries.
A document of nearly 150 pages which follows an initial controversy in January 2021 concerning the State’s use of the private consulting firm McKinsey to define the vaccination policy against Covid-19. A Senate report published in March 2022 later castigated a “sprawling phenomenon”, indicating that the contracts of consulting firms with the state had “more than doubled” between 2018 and 2021.
In response to a citizen consultation in the spring of 2022, the Court of Auditors therefore decided to look into this practice. An inventory that turns out to be quite severe with the government.
Advice that replaces the administration
Over the pages, the Court of Auditors notably accuses the government of preferring to turn to consulting firms to fulfill missions which are nevertheless the “core business of the administration”. The sages of rue Cambon also denounce the interference of these external service providers in the decision-making of the ministries. A criticism already formulated in the 2022 Senate report.
The Court thus describes the use of private consulting firms as an “easy solution”, which the report explains in particular by the lack of means and the constrained deadlines of the administrations.
However, the Court of Auditors does not totally refute the use of private advice to ministries, but its report nevertheless calls on public officials to give this practice “a more adjusted and better controlled place among the various administrative instruments for conducting their assignments”.
A budget tripled in four years
The public institution also details the cost of these appeals: 890 million euros billed to the State in 2021, three quarters of which “concern the field of IT”, specifies the report.
In this envelope dedicated to private practices, the document quantifies the use of the State for consulting services, by adding the signing of new contracts and the payment of previous ones: 504 million euros in 2021 and 377 million euros in 2022 A budget which represents 0.04% of the state budget last year, but the amount of which has tripled in the past four years according to the institution.
Despite this quantified report, the Court of Auditors deplores in its report a lack of “reliable data” and monitoring of State expenditure for these services, in particular because of the diversity of these contracts through the various ministries.
For the Court, “the definition of the scope and methods of processing advisory assignments must therefore be clarified and harmonized and the monitoring system improved.”