Stanislas Guerini is convinced of this: technology makes it possible to improve and streamline relations between the various administrations and the French. Ahead of the VivaTech show, the Parisian high mass of start-ups where he plans to “pitcher” Thursday, June 15, he presents his thoughts and projects to L’Express.
L’Express: What role can digital technology play in the modernization of the administration?
Stanislas Guerini: An absolutely central role. Transforming our administrations without relying on digital would be madness. We need it to make our public services more accessible and to improve their quality. There are 2 billion online interactions each year between the French and their administrations and more than 90% of the procedures are already carried out digitally.
But digitizing requires fulfilling certain essential conditions. It is first necessary to facilitate the life of French people who are distant from it, because of their age, their handicap or difficulties in understanding the administrative codes. There is therefore no question of digitizing approaches that were originally poorly designed. We can use digital technology to rethink our public policies, simplify them when necessary, and ultimately make a public service more efficient. An example: we support the Keeper of the Seals to completely digitize criminal proceedings, i.e. 1.3 million court decisions digitized to date in the 163 courts where this project is deployed. The time savings for the agents, in following up on a file or sending out a summons, is 97%. The courts are freed from paper, and the agents can concentrate on tasks for which they have greater added value.
On May 9, the Prime Minister brought together the entire government to put digital technology at the heart of our issues, on all subjects: ecological transition, health, education, work, housing, justice and police. The course is simple: the effectiveness of public policies serving the needs of the French people. The way is clear: decompartmentalize as much as possible. We must stop imagining digital strategies each in his silo, without looking at what the neighbor is doing. The State’s digital department, the Dinum, which is inter-ministerial, will be the conductor of this desire.
Are we making the best use of public data in France?
The good news is that we are at the forefront of open public data among European countries. But they are still too little distributed between the different administrations. The French complain, with reason, that they are constantly asked for the same information from one administration to another. In an ideal public service, we should be able to guarantee the user a simple principle: “Tell us once”. The other weakness is that it is a little difficult to identify the cases of use of these public data, whereas they can lead to formidable innovations. We saw it during the pandemic with tools like CovidTracker or Quickly my dose.
Tools that were not designed by the administration, as one might have hoped, but by an individual, in this case Guillaume Rozier…
We have nothing to be ashamed of: CovidTracker was able to see the light of day because there is a public data policy in France. Today, on Data.gouv.fr, 46,000 data sets are available to outside players, individuals or companies. The lesson we can learn from this is that letting go is no longer an option. The doctrine of thinking that everything should be outsourced is a dead end. Public authorities must reclaim these subjects.
But believing that it can “do it alone”, without resorting to private initiative or an ecosystem of start-ups, which we also support, would be just as much of a dead end. The right answer is to do it together. This requires rethinking our doctrine of digital public action. The State must fully play its role: define the rules of the game, in particular on ethics, security, interoperability or data standards. We help private actors to develop, with the key to positive externalities at the service of the French. It is a source of pride to see the emergence of companies like Doctolib, which provide a real service, in a framework that respects and secures patient data. We must be inspired by it.
In which way ?
Making appointments with the administration has become a central issue, as we can clearly see with requests for passports or identity cards. To shorten the current delays in issuing these titles, we are in the process of deploying in town halls and France Services spaces an appointment booking tool, “RDV Service Public”, which we have developed. He plans, for example, to receive an SMS the day before the appointment, which makes it possible to divide the no-show rate by at least two. It is in a way a Doctolib of public services.
We must ensure the fundamentals of public services by adapting to the uses of our fellow citizens. In Brazil, the administration has focused on its interactions with users. She found that email was used less and less by the working classes, whose mailboxes are very spammy, and that instant messengers like WhatsApp were much more popular. We too must have a real multi-channel strategy: digital, telephone and physical, because we should never oppose digitization and humanization of our public services – it’s essential!
Can artificial intelligence (AI) improve the work of the administration?
It’s simple: either we pretend to believe that this revolution does not exist and we suffer. Either we do everything to take advantage of it. We are going to launch an experiment in September: 200 agents from different administrations, who answer users’ questions, will be equipped with several generative AI tools, from ChatGPT, LLaMa or Falcon. We will compare the responses generated by these tools, to measure their quality and the impact on agent efficiency. Studies carried out by customer relations specialists show that the availability of this type of tool increases efficiency by 14%. The objective is not to eliminate posts for public officials but to improve efficiency in responding to user requests and to put officials where they are most useful.
And in specific digital professions, are you going to recruit?
I asked the General Inspectorate of Finance and the General Council of the Economy to conduct a mission on the digital sector of the State. The conclusion is clear: the reinternalisation of skills within the administrations is the key issue, as we are doing with strategy consulting services. We need to strengthen our own project management capacity, in other words to steer and deploy our projects. It is estimated that it will take 2,500 recruitments per year to bring us up to standard. We are in the process of identifying, ministry by ministry, the needs. Fewer network infrastructure managers, but more project directors or data scientists. At the same time, we must train the current agents in this sector, whose average age is 47, to the highest degree of technicality. We are going to launch a State digital campus, to increase the skills of these staff, but also all civil service executives: a new course on digital issues has been introduced in the schooling of the INSP [NDLR : l’Institut national du service public], which replaced the ENA. Because tomorrow, an administrative executive will have to know how to support a digital project, this will be his daily life.
The site metiers.numeriques.gouv.fr, launched a year and a half ago, was supposed to offer positions of this order. There are only two ads currently online…
All offers in the public service are now centralized on a new site, chooseleservicepublic.gouv.fr, which is the single access platform for all civil service professions. With the full description of the positions, but also the different methods, in addition to the administrative competitions, to work in the service of the State: apprenticeship, recruitment by contract… 4,415 job offers in the digital sector are now accessible !
Last March, the government banned apps like TikTok, Netflix or Twitter on the work phones of public officials. What is the balance sheet?
Recreational applications had no place on these phones, for reasons of cybersecurity and protection of government data. Except for certain agents whose job justifies it, in particular communicators. This ban, which protects the State as well as our agents, was common sense. It was accepted and implemented without difficulty in all administrations.