En appearance, the French have fickle feelings towards their civil servants, sometimes applauded from the windows of the whole country for their mobilization in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, sometimes suspected of feeding all the ills of the country such as debt, inertia, amateurism and many more things.
But, on closer inspection, our fellow citizens, beyond fits of temper, remain attached to the principles of the public service, and to the women and men who bring it to life, as shown by the barometer annual, the last of which was published on March 31, 2022, by AATF and Ipsos. It can thus be seen that 68% of French people have a good opinion of territorial civil servants, local public officials carrying out their missions as close as possible to our fellow citizens. 75% of them are in favor of the principle of merit-based recruitment through competitive examinations.
For the French, the civil service is therefore a solution, not a problem. At the dawn of this new five-year term, it is no less true that several major challenges face it. The first challenge is that of attractiveness. The disaffection for public professions has settled in our country. Recruiting nurses, teachers, but also engineers and technicians in charge of public works has sometimes become an impossible exercise.
Giving meaning to careers in administration
Many civil servants, tired, choose to leave the administration. However, there is no fatality. It is up to the government to quickly activate the index point lever, after a ten-year period of freezing and in a context of soaring inflation. While purchasing power is essential, it is not everything.
We also need to give meaning back to careers in the administration. From high school, we must show the merits of commitment to the general interest to the youngest among us who aspire to professions related to the causes that are close to their hearts. Let’s put the public service in tune with the battles and challenges of the 21st centurye century, by creating an Erasmus program for civil servants to increase their openness to the world, by integrating issues of participatory democracy, digital transition, gender equality into their training, or even by integrating into the statute a principle of taking account of objectives of the ecological transition.
The second challenge is that of accessibility. In a country fractured territorially and socially, crossed by major technological transformations, confronted with the shocks of aging and great migrations, it is advisable to offer to the civil servants the means of carrying out the public service differently.
You have 45.95% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.