Guest of the CNEWS morning this Thursday, Gabriel Attal, government spokesperson, returned to the McKinsey affair. “The reform of the senior civil service should allow us to have less recourse to consulting firms,” he said.
This reform carried out by the government since last April, which includes in particular the abolition of the ENA in favor of the National Institute of Public Service (INSP), “allows us to be more effective on these subjects”, affirmed the door- word.
It aims in particular to eliminate the large bodies of the senior civil service, but also to allow more mobility for civil servants, and in particular to encourage passage between the public and private sectors.
“The reform we have made is more mobility to allow people who may not be part of the senior civil service to come and bring their skills and expertise. This is expected by the French and this is what will allow us to be more efficient, ”explained Gabriel Attal.
This Wednesday, the Minister of Transformation and the Public Service, Amélie de Montchalin, as well as Olivier Dussopt, Minister of Public Accounts, held a press conference to respond to the McKinsey controversy. The State is accused of having used various consulting firms during the health crisis, up to 890 million euros in 2021. The American firm McKinsey, although established in France, did not however pay tax. in France for ten years, according to a Senate report.
Amélie de Montchalin reaffirmed this Wednesday that “the rules of public procurement [ont été] strictly adhered to” in this dossier. Olivier Dussopt for his part recalled that “decisions are never taken by consultants”, but by the government, and that consulting firms only provide expertise on specific points. “We did not divest ourselves of our responsibilities,” added Amélie de Montchalin.
The ministers however affirmed that efforts were possible in the policy of recourse to consulting firms, and announced that for 2022, the government was going to “reduce by at least 15% the recourse to external consulting services” to favor skills internal.