Contenu du sommaire : Quelle formation pour les fonctionnaires ?

Legal and Management Training of Public Employees in the United States : the Use of Case studies. There is no centralized or unified system of initial training for the 15 million or so American administrative public employees. The majority of these employees receive legal and management training outside state-run institutions, in universities usually offering a Masters's course in Public Administration. Consequently, the legal casebooks on which the teaching of law is based are giving an increasingly amount of space to law — constitutional and administrative — relating to administrative practice. Case studies in management, which have been used from the thirties onwards, in particular at Harvard University, and supported by a vast movement of ideas, are increasingly focusing on the specific nature of public administration.

Legal Training of Civil Servants from Britain's central Administration. Improvements in the legal training of senior civil servants from Britain's central administration, although seen as a precondition for coping with the notable increase in the number of claims, do not qualify for special appropriations. The introduction of basic legal training for administrators is a recent initiative which, though not very ambitious, is designed to produce quick results. For its part, the training of officials of the legal departments is being provided in a prevailing atmosphere of crisis. Yet, this training would allow the policymaking departments to make better use of the services of the legal departments.

Professionalism and Training in the Public Services. Training is an essential investment in an organization's future. What is needed is a detailed in-service training scheme which forms part of a broader long-term training programme. The project for modernizing the services of the Ministry of Equipment is a good example. Particular emphasis is given to training officials in management. However, management training is limited to key departments like Telecommunications, Equipment, Finance, etc. Future policy should perhaps be designed to offer advanced management training courses to the main cadres of state officials.

The Local Civil Service : Issues Involved in Management Training. The Centre national de la fonction publique territoriale (CNFPT — a local civil service organization) successfully organizes a mid-career training course for the supervisory staff of the more important local authorities. Designed to meet the new needs created by decentralization at a moment when local finances are in a troubled state, this local management course makes wide use of methods directly related to administrative practice (case studies, simulations and field projects), improves trainees' knowledge of the workings of local authorities and increases their self confidence.

For a more “Government-Oriented” Approach to Training : the Civil Servant, Legal Expert or Public Administrator? The current legal training of civil servants fails to make adequate provisions for the teaching of law as it is actually practiced in everyday situations. Although they are the main actors in the formulation and implementation of public policy, civil servants are invariably left to fend for themselves in this field. The development of an alternative training programme hinges first and foremost on overcoming the opposition between legal expert and public administrator : the two dimensions are present in administrative practice at one and the same time. This distinction may be overcome if one regards the law as a readily available resource lying within the reach of both public and private actors in the policy-making process ; and if one designs rules, not with a view to their rigid enforcement but with a view to encouraging discussions between the parties concerned on the very subject of their application. Only then will it be possible to come up with alternative training guidelines. Rather than seeking to preserve the illusion of a black box or proposing even more technical skills and specialization, this training should prepare policymakers to improvise one solution after another in the field of public policy.

Adapting the Legal Training of Civil Servants to the Everyday Realities of Management. Owing to the nature of its tasks and the composition of its staff, the Ministry of Justice should, logically, be particularly well placed to uncover ways of enhancing the State's ability to adapt to the exigencies of innovation and efficiency. Yet, the ministry's administrators are confronted with manifold difficulties arising, for the most part, from an inadequate grasp of the relationship between standards and means.

“European Affairs” Training for Civil Servants, or the urgency of a systematic approach that is adapted to the demands of a Community in its final stages of realisation. Though the training of our civil servants in European affairs has developped for the past 4 years along the lines of special training courses either of an introductory or specialized nature, such training programs currently encounter the problem of possessing only a rough knowledge of the needs and they remain very deficient in the field of Community law and languages. It is advisable on the short term to promote both theoretical and practical training for all appointed high-level Civil Servants, and the long term, to set up a system ensuring that every student (thus including those who may be candidates for administrative competitive exams) has the minimum qualifications in “European Affairs”. both theoretical and practical training for ail appointed high-level Civil Servants, and the long term, to set up a System ensuring that every student (thus including those who may be candidates for administrative compétitive exams) has the minimum qualifica¬ tions in “European Affairs”.

Communication, the Law and the Citizen. The Law in France has endured some serious discredit : first of all because of the mediocrity of the legal rules and the increasing number of laws, decrees and other legal texts ; secondly because of the evolution of society in general. There is a profound separation between the Law and the information that is given. Now is the time to grant the citizen the right to be informed on the state of the Law. It is imperative to instruct the different administrations on how to communicate and important to explain to citizens the extent scope of their rights ; it is also necessary to hear the demands of the citizen who are not only users of the Law but are also at the origin of the Law.

Concerning the Training of Civil Servants. The initial training of Civil Servants performed in the relevant administrative schools does not allow sufficient room in the program for such basic studies as law, history, economics,... resulting in the inability of civil servants to carry out their ever-varying assignments or to demonstrate inventiveness. The article further criticizes the way the administration is organised into distinct bodies (“corps”) ; this presents two major shortcomings : early recruitment and the closed system denying access to the administration, to talented individuals from Academia, the Armed Forces or the private business sector. Consequently transfer's occur only in one direction.