He has been, for two years now, the best-known data processing specialist in the French, whom he has helped to find vaccination niches. Perhaps even, “thanks” to the Covid crisis and its popularization work, the first to have embraced such media coverage. Here he is now a few days away from landing at the Élysée. As revealed Politico’s Playbook Newsletter, Guillaume Rozier, creator of CovidTracker, ViteMaDose and recently TrackMyWatt, will join the ranks of Emmanuel Macron’s cabinet as “data adviser” to the President of the Republic, under the orders of the new head of the communication and strategy department Frédéric Michel . He should take his first steps at the Château in January 2023.
The entrance to the Élysée of the young computer engineer is not surprising. It was even likely, as he caught the eye of the President of the Republic, who decorated him with the National Order of Merit “on an exceptional basis” in July 2021. Since the creation of the CovidTracker site in March 2020, Emmanuel Macron and Guillaume Rozier maintain regular and direct exchanges. The Head of State, a great lover of risk-taking and civil society initiatives, a founding father of the “start-up nation” concept who likes to wear his “French Tech” hoodie, appreciates the way the Ile-de-France has appropriated public data and put it to music to serve the general interest. “He has a disruptive profile as the president likes them: he has talent, he is a true lover of France and one of the faces of modernity”, assures a former adviser to the Château.
“It will not be easy for him”
And if Rozier, consultant since October 2020 at Octo Technology, a subsidiary of the American group Accenture, gave in to the songs of the sirens of the Élysée, this is not the first time that they have come to whisper in his ear. According to a source close to the presidency, the Castle had already, during the previous five-year term, tried to recruit the expert in “big data”. Finally, the Head of State and his new special adviser in communication and strategy, Frédéric Michel, were able to convince the prodigy after several weeks of discussions, during which he also spoke with the government’s new Digital Mr. Deputy Minister Jean-Noël Barrot.
He himself never concealed his desire to commit himself to the service of the State, as he acknowledged in a interview with Le Figaro the day after Emmanuel Macron’s re-election: “If I am more effective in civil society, I would be happy. And if I am more effective within the State, I would be happy too”, declared- there in May. “It’s not a big surprise, I have always felt in Guillaume this desire to come and help from the inside”, slips the former Secretary of State in charge of the Digital Transition Cédric O, who spoke to several times with Rozier during the acute Covid crisis. Difficult to establish at this time what will be the precise missions of Guillaume Rozier within the cabinet of Emmanuel Macron, especially since the title of his new Elysian position, “data adviser”, is to say the least nebulous. The most obvious, as Politico relates and confirms a source close to the Élysée, is the improvement in the monitoring of public policies, particularly in terms of energy consumption.
According to the Head of State’s entourage, one of the dimensions of Rozier’s roadmap could also consist in promoting better release of State data so that civil society can, like him, get away with it. seize and make them bear fruit. The expert, member of the L’Express think-tank during the presidential campaign, had in particular in our pages urged the State, the communities, the administrations, to go even further in the sharing of its data and had proposed a ” Act II of the Digital Republic” to remove the obstacles to open data. “It won’t be easy for him and he must be aware of it, admits someone close to Emmanuel Macron. The state is a big machine, very complex, sometimes slow, with its own grammar. It’s always difficult when you come from the outside to figure out how not to be the busybody.”
Consequently, Guillaume Rozier will undoubtedly have to work closely with the Minister of the Public Service – and former general delegate of La République en Marche – Stanislas Guérini, on questions of the digital transformation of the State. No small feat…
Another recruit… at Matignon this time
On this aspect, the other head of the executive is not left out. Like the Élysée, Matignon also strengthened itself at the start of December by integrating into its teams the former ministerial delegate for digital health, Laura Létourneau. The one who notably piloted the SIDEP portal, the screening information system during the Covid health crisis, joined the general secretariat for ecological planning, under the leadership of its director Antoine Peillon. Objective: to duplicate the know-how accumulated during the pandemic on issues of environmental and energy transitions.
A recruit of very high quality, according to the former Secretary of State in charge of Digital Cédric O: “SIDEP does not exist in any other country in the world! France does not realize what it owes to Laura Létourneau and Dominique Pon (the former ministerial head of digital health, editor’s note), they both helped save the country.” It will, among other things, be called upon to work with Bercy and its Digital State Secretariat to improve the tools allowing the French to better monitor their energy consumption on a day-to-day basis; but also to improve the coordination of the different layers of the administration to pursue the objectives in terms of ecology. Rozier, Létourneau: when the State accelerates in the digital modernization of its functioning and public policies. Which makes the Minister Delegate for the Digital Transition and Telecommunications Jean-Noël Barrot say: “These are people who could have extremely lucrative careers in the private sector. Whether they choose to enter or remain in the service of state is, really, great news.”