PUBLIC SECTOR

Issues and challenges in the sector

It is possible to define the public sector in France quite easily by distinguishing its three main components:

• Public administrations (State and local authorities)

• Public enterprises

• Public administrative establishments in charge of social security.

The public service’s missions carrying out are very diverse both in terms of their nature and the way the manage them.

These missions may eventually be carried out by public bodies that are not part of the public service, by private bodies (financed or not by public authorities), and by public enterprises.

For several years now, the public sector has been engaged in a process of fundamental transformation in order to respond to the challenges it faces within a constrained budgetary framework: performance improvement, skills development, changes in managerial practices, focus on the end-user and the citizen, digitization, economic development of the territory, etc...

France, like other countries, must anticipate and take part in numerous transitions: ecological, digital, economic, demographic and ageing of the population, social, industrial or cultural.

Public players are faced with the need to radically transform their practices: budgetary constraints, economic development of territories, new user expectations, including digital, sustainable growth, maintenance of the social model, etc.

Public organizations have been working for several years to modernize their services to improve their efficiency and better respond to new uses and needs of citizens.

This is one of the priorities given to administrations by the French government as part of its "Action Publique 2022" programme, with the objective of total dematerialisation of public services by 2022. Improving the quality of public services, providing a modernized working environment for civil servants and controlling public spending by optimizing resources... these are the objectives of the "Action Publique 2022" program, launched by the Government on 13 October 2017, to accelerate the transformation of the administration.

The modernization of the State and more broadly of the public sphere aims to strengthen the quality of service provided to citizens and to improve working conditions for public officials to enable a more efficient, more economical and more transparent public service.

While the transformation must be fair and balanced for both public officials and citizens, the financial issue cannot be avoided. We are now witnessing a shared phenomenon of cumulative fiscal saturation at a level of budgetary constraint unprecedented up to now. This implies a permanent search for productivity gains in public action in all its forms.

While the process of digital transformation of the French public sector is already well underway, the transition phase is accelerating in order to succeed in bringing citizens, businesses and local authorities closer together and to offer citizens a coherent path.

The modernization of infrastructure and business lines represents a major challenge for the public sector, which is subject to a high level of requirements in terms of public expenditure control, risk management and compliance standards. It has also had to overcome various cultural, budgetary and structural obstacles linked to a very vertical hierarchical model, siloted operation and traditionally longer investment and programming cycles.

Much of the complexity of public transformation lies in the number and diversity of stakeholders. While they all share public service values, their needs and expectations, interests, resources and constraints (technical, legal, human, statutory or financial) lead them to view transformation differently.

In addition to the complexity of the diversity and number of stakeholders, there is also the complexity of the imperative for public service to serve all citizens without any difference. Where a private actor can operate in a segment or Pareto logic, the public actor must be able to serve everyone without distinction of profitability. This rule applies to citizens but also to territories, be they small or large, urban or rural, all must benefit from the same level of public service in terms of energy, digital, infrastructure, mobility, etc.

Priorities for action for the public sector

Four actions are key to the success of the transformations desired and undertaken by public actors:

The definition of clear objectives that can be broadly shared by all stakeholders is a key prerequisite for public action. While the targets of the action to be achieved may differ from one public player to another, depending on the granularity of its territory or the population served, a common trajectory with a shared goal can be identified even if the method of reconciling perspectives is not obvious. As in the private sector, the notion of value (for the citizen, for the public agent, for the service...) is not taboo and can make it possible to rapidly align all public energies towards a single clear, legible, comprehensible and engaging objective for all.

In this approach, a key success factor is the strong and permanent consideration of the user and the citizen. The tools of "citizen centricity" (citizen personas, user experience and public value proposition) are decisive. But they cannot be truly effective without taking into account the symmetry of attention. Public agents must be able to understand, adhere to and mobilise around a common sense in the consideration of their particular problems and issues. On the subject of the citizen, the exploitation and enhancement of data is also becoming an essential factor in guiding and optimising the effectiveness of public transformation.

Therefore, the mobilization of all stakeholders in a short time frame with tangible results is key. The "V" cycle approach is too long and exhausts energy without achieving rapid results. New project management methods (Agile in particular), adapted to the public sphere, can be encouraged, adapted and deployed. They make it possible to mobilize, in short cycles, the necessary expertise and decisions while respecting the administrative and legal public constraints of each of the actors involved. They also have the advantage of then facilitating the transition to scale, which can be complex in the public environment despite successful pilot projects.

However, despite this break in the management of public transformation projects, which allows for faster and more visible results, the public schedule cannot be a direct copy/paste of the private one. The public temporal specificity must be considered as a whole in order to structure a realistic and effective action plan. It must also adapt to frequent changes in the public budgetary framework (suspension or adaptation of budgets). In parallel, this requires initiatives to support change, education, clarity of objectives, upstream consideration of implementation constraints and education of staff and citizens.

Case studies

Abington has always been supporting the State, local authorities, their satellites, and public companies in carrying out their missions in the service of regional development. This translates into both missions to support fundamental changes in the sector’s practices and missions of economic analysis, strategic support, financial modelling, assistance in the choice of management methods, financial audit, contract management, etc …