The Zone Interdite program broadcasts this November 12 on M6, an unprecedented investigation into the heart of National Education. Among the many dysfunctions denounced, one project in particular is said to have cost taxpayers nearly half a billion euros.
The project started in 2007, mobilized hundreds of computer scientists and cost 400 million euros at the taxpayer’s expense and ultimately never came to fruition. This is a case of waste of public money carried out by the Ministry of National Education, according to the new investigation by Zone Interdite, Mistreated teachers, administrative chaos: National Education on the verge of collapse, broadcast this Sunday, November 12 at 9:10 p.m. on M6. During their investigations, within several educational establishments and an academic rectorate, the journalists thus put their finger on a particularly expensive project and little known to the general public: the SIRHEN software.
What is the National Education SIRHEN project?
In the Zone Interdite investigation, we learn that behind this name, which is similar to a code name, the Ministry of National Education wants to create a super computer program which would bring together all the payroll, management and resource tools. human rights linked to education personnel. When the idea emerged, it was 2007 and the software used in rectorates, to find available teachers according to their discipline, had been obsolete for several years already. Some officials even compare it to “minitel”. The former Minister of Education, Xavier Darcos, and his team are therefore launching this major project, financed by taxpayers’ money and which alone mobilizes 400 full-time IT professionals.
A project doomed to never see the light of day
But quickly, the ambitious program turned into failure. One of the heads of the IT project, who appears in the report, denounces an organization “made in National Education”. Implied, there is no coordination and above all, the people called to the project are not sufficiently trained. Another witness, who worked for one of the service providers responsible for developing the software, also admits that this project could never have seen the light of day, because “there was no study done” to find out whether or not the initial plan was feasible. Despite the failures noted, the ministry will persevere in this voice. The SIRHEN program will continue to be developed for eleven years until 2018. That year, Jean-Michel Banquer, then Minister of Education, will definitively stop the project. The results are bitter: 400 million euros of public money wasted so that in the end, civil servants are still using the same outdated software.
A case which is unfortunately far from being the only one. A few months ago, a 204-page report on the teaching profession, commissioned by the Ministry of Education and produced by the consulting firm McKinsey, was the subject of a committee of inquiry in the Senate, because the latter would have been billed 500,000 euros, or 2,400 euros per page, underlines the Zone Interdite investigation… Always at the expense of the French.
Restricted zone, Mistreated teachers, administrative chaos: National Education on the verge of collapse. Sunday November 12 at 9:10 p.m. on M6. A documentary by Julie Pellet, Kevin Denzler and Jean-Charles Doria (Tony Comiti).