“Proximity and accessibility must guide the ambition for public action”

Grandstand. Our country has been living to the rhythm of a global health crisis for two years. This collective ordeal has brought to the fore millions of women and men who until then had been invisible and who nevertheless play a fundamental role in schools, hospitals, police stations, courts, administrative services…

These essential services have become so obvious and everyday to us that we almost forget that they are a matter of collective choices, and that they are not immutable. Maintaining cohesion, redistributing wealth, protecting lives, determining destinies, repairing the living, guaranteeing rights, preparing for the future, these are the highly demanding missions that we assign to them.

According to a recent survey by the Kantar Institute, if 73% of French people welcome the ability of public services to ensure continuity of service in the face of Covid, yet 39% consider them less accessible today and 33% less close to users. The rapid and widespread dematerialization has also weakened the support and mediation functions at the heart of the public service relationship, while 13 million of our fellow citizens are in difficulty with digital technology.

A real democratic debate

The presidential election should be an opportunity to debate political projects and the place that public services occupy in them. Each candidate knows that to implement his program, nothing will be possible without the mobilization of administrations, agents and tools of public action, but also of civil society. Our country deserves a real democratic debate for this.

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However, the managerial approach focused on the only indicator of the share of public expenditure in the French gross domestic product still saturates the space for discussion and representation. The successive modernization projects of past years have above all sought to “optimize” direct costs and the number of public officials, sometimes to the detriment of the founding principles of public services, often by generating side effects, by perpetuating or importing inadequate human resources and management policies.

Thanks to our experience as public officials working in different organisations, we therefore launched the reflection club on Sense of public service.

Ecological and social example

Our objective ? To advance in all public services equality of access, the ecological and social exemplary nature of the administration, and the democratic listening of the citizens, by inviting from now on a more humane administration, which takes care of the agents audiences, citizens, the country and our planet.

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