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DIGITAL GOVERNMENT

Transforming Public Action - eGovernment in France

An overview of the digital transformation of French public services.

Marine Dupuis

January 16, 2022


E-government or digital government refers to the use of new technology in administrations to achieve a better government by making public services more accessible and procedures simpler (OCDE, 2003). A pioneer state in this field is Estonia since its citizens can realize almost all of their administrative procedures online. In 2017, the former French Prime Minister Edouard Phillippe affirmed that "the Estonian reality is the French objective in terms of e-administration by 2022", and consequently launched a program to rethink the model of public action in France, called "Public Action 2022".  A few months before the end of Emmanuel Macron's mandate, has France evolved and become a leading country in the field of digital administration? And heretofore, what were the pivotal moments in the French digital transformation? 

 

Some insights on the development of France's e-administration


The stake of the modernization of the public service in France induces to disrupt the complex and rigid procedures in a country of bureaucratic tradition, to evolve towards a modernized and agile administration. The French strategy for the digital transformation of the state dates back to the early 2000s. Thus, one of the first upheavals in the field was the creation in 2000 of the service-public.fr website, allowing individuals to have online access to practical resources on the realization of their administrative procedures.


After this simple period of online information, a second step in the digital transformation of public services took place with a real process of dematerialization of essential administrative procedures, spurred on by three action plans in 1998, 2004, and 2008. Afterwards, in 2013, within the framework of the law "enabling the Government to simplify relations between the administration and the citizens", France adopted multiple measures to simplify administrative procedures. It was therefore particularly necessary since, in 2014, the Global Competitiveness Report of the World Economic Forum revealed that France was ranked 121st out of 144 countries in the world in terms of administrative burden.

 

Here, the notion of administrative simplification is central and constitutes the third point in the french digital transition of public services. Actually, the establishment of a digital administration is not limited to the simple transposition of the usual procedures in the online space but relies on the improvement of the citizen experience. The administration is indeed seeking to modernize itself for better efficiency, but the key point here is to reshape the relationship between citizens and the public service.


Furthermore, in 2014, a decree developed the "state as a platform" project, aiming to make the state an interface between administrations, where the digital interoperability of information systems in the administration is reinforced. This decree was of great importance since it induced the pooling of all infrastructures, networks, and software between the different administrations. Back in 2015, France passed a law "for a Digital Republic". This digital bill was a major breakthrough in the digital transformation of public services since it allowed easy access to administrative documents, but also initiated the open share of public data on the platform www.data.gouv.fr. The sharing of data held by the administrations was therefore made available to the public for better transparency of public action while giving the possibility to the French to enrich the available data.

 

The Macron mandate: a turning point for the modernization of public services?


In 2017, candidate Emmanuel Macron vowed to make the “French administration at the service of innovators'', and emphasized “I would like to be able to proceed very quickly to a profound change in the administration”. Became president, it is no wonder that the government chose to quickly embark on a major reform of the state. The "Public Action 2022" program was therefore set up, the aim of which was to dematerialize by 2022 the 250 most used administrative procedures in France. To ensure the enforcement of the program, the French interministerial directorate for digital affairs (DINUM) was created, with a focus on the information systems of French administrations. The DINUM works jointly with the already existing DITP (Inter-ministerial Directorate for Public Transformation) on the three-layer objective of this program: improving the quality of public services for users, controlling public expenditure for tax-payers, and modernizing the status and working conditions in the public service for civil servants.  We, therefore, see here a will for a multi-scalar transformation of the administration, taking into account all the stakeholders. So a few months before the deadline, what are the outcomes of the “Public Action 2022” program? 

 

As of today, 212 of the 250 most common procedures in France such as the declaration of income, the payment of taxes and fines, the request for identity papers, the request for housing assistance, and access to the certificate of Covid-19 vaccination are fully available online. It is therefore clear that France has experienced a clear acceleration in its digital transformation in recent years, despite the pandemic. Thus, what could have represented a roadblock paradoxically reinforced the digital transformation of the state. In fact, as part of the "France Relance" economic recovery plan, aimed at reviving the French economy, following the economic crisis linked to the Covid-19 pandemic, an envelope of 1.7 billion euros, in support of the digital transformation of the state, was allocated.

 

France: a digital champion at the international scale?


But how can we determine whether these developments have enabled France to become a leader in the field of e-governance? One of the solutions is the #EDGI indicator, created by the UN to study the development strategies of digital administration in the world. EGDI is a composite index between 0 and 1 used to determine the performance of e-governments. It is calculated by the average of three indices, quantifying respectively: the use of NTIC's for public services, the degree of telecommunication connectivity in the country (internet access), and the human capacity of citizens (human capital).


Currently, France is ranked 19th and has lost 10 places compared to 2018; despite a high index of 0.87180. France remains ninth at the European level, behind countries like Denmark, Estonia, or Finland which are at the top of the ranking (both European and international). France's EGDI ranking had never been so low given that since 2008, the French state had always been in the world's top 10 for e-government. The index, therefore, shows that compared to other countries the deployment of e-government in France is becoming slower. 

 

The digital divide in France: Those left behind in the digital transformation of the state


France’s EDGI index is indeed showing us that the maturity of the French e-government is not completely optimal, especially concerning connectivity and Internet access. And in fact, the digital transition of public services, despite its obvious benefits, has a major limit, since it can counterproductively constitute a breach of equality in access to the public service, by excluding people in difficulty with technology.  First, more than 7.5 million people in France do not have quality access to the Internet connection, especially in the countryside and ultramarine territories. In addition, access to computer equipment is also a factor of discrimination in the realization of dematerialized procedures since 19% of French people do not have a computer at home. Finally, the dematerialization of procedures can also be a source of difficulties for people who are unable to use digital tools: a third of French people (18 million) consider themselves to be little or not competent to use a computer.


The digital transformation of the administration, therefore, comes up against problems of territorial, economic and cultural inequalities. As such, the example of France is interesting insofar as a large part of the social disputes is based on the bad relations between citizens and administration. Indeed, the lack of access to public services and their scarcity in the rural areas was one of the reasons which triggered the “yellow vests'' movement, a protest movement that resulted in numerous demonstrations in 2018 and 2019. France, therefore, faces a paradox and is on a crest line where digital administration can offer great possibilities in terms of accessibility and access to rights for all, but at the same time carries a risk of exclusion for many citizens, who are isolated and not digital literate.

 

Digital administration:  a move towards open democracy ?


This article aimed to paint a non-exhaustive picture of the process of digitization of French public services. Yet, the study of some of the milestones of the French public action reforms, and in particular the “Public Action 2022 program” reveals a will of decision-makers to embrace digital technology and its methods as a lever for modernizing the state. We have seen that the question of digitization increasingly reconfigures legislation and the state is showing initiative in the creation of new frameworks and tools for digital public administration.  But this digitization is not limited only to a simplification of the daily life of French citizens but provokes a profound change in terms of governance, by being an instrument of open government. Indeed, the introduction of the digital in the public sphere contributes to redefining the doctrine of governance, towards a more horizontal model relying on the exigence of transparency and the openness of public data, as well as promoting collaboration with civil society in the design of public policies. Algan et al. (2010) summarize well the potentialities of this concept: “The way in which public services are produced must be rethought by encouraging the use of “agile” methods and experimentation within public services and by involving users in the co-production of these services through participative processes (…) to adapt the social contract between the citizens and the State to this new digital era. ".


In striving for digital leadership, France must therefore continue to encourage a citizen-oriented approach in the design of new public services; which would make it possible to overcome administrative rigidities and the traditional vertical aspect of the French administration, while taking better account of the needs of its citizens. The central issue is therefore to avoid a “forced march” transformation of public services, weakening the French people who are the most distant from digital.


References & Link

Government and official publications

 

International reports

 

Reports

 

Journal articles

 

Online press articles

Marine Dupuis is a third year student, completing her Bachelor Degree in Social Sciences in Sciences Po Paris. She is majoring in Political Humanities and minoring in International Relations. She is spending her third year abroad, in the University of Tartu, Estonia. She realized several internships in Paris in the field of public relations and is currently a research assistant for a French sociologist, Dominique Cardon, specialiazed in big data.She is fluent in French and English, can communicate in German, and is currently learning Russian.

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