Contenu du sommaire : Du contrôle à l'évaluation  : l'évolution des fonctions d'inspection

The General Inspectorates of the French Public Administration: organization, function and evolution — General Inspectorates within the French administration are characterized, at first, by the diversity not only of their origin, their history, their field of intervention, but also by their organizational model, their recruitment and their degree of prestige. However, beyond this apparent heterogeneity, General Inspectorates share a common feature linked to the very nature of their work and the expectation placed in the functions it fulfills. Activities conducted by the General Inspectorates are globally changing, for all of them, in the same direction: besides the original control and inspection missions in a narrow sense, other missions have been added in the in recent years such as audit, policy evaluation and advising decision makers and managers. These new missions are continually increasing.

— The initiative of General Inspectorates action — General Inspectorates being directly available to the ministers, everything would suggest that their activity is determined solely by them. In reality, the institutional position of the General Inspectorates is not enough to give a complete view on the initiative of their action. No doubt the request remains essentially the prerogative of ministers. But the kickstart of the action is also based on negotiation and consensus. This gives to see a singular aspect of the contractualization of relations within the state.

— The General Inspectorates and the Investigation Committee on the Cost and the Efficiency of Public Services: a missed opportunity — The evolution of the relations between the Investigation Committee on the Cost and Efficiency of Public Services and the general inspectorates shows how, since 1946, the initial dynamic of the Comity has weakened, transforming it progressively in an internal consultant's office, competing more than complementing the inspectorates to which it gave most of its human resources. The reasons beyond the evolution are multiple. They are consequences of the definition and allocation of missions and of questions of method. Far from exporting a culture of evaluation outside of the Committee, exchanges with the general inspectorates have imported the habitus of control and of the engineering office within the Committee, which in turn lost its specific characteristics.

— Changing Scale? The General Inspectorates of Education facing the devolution of the educational system — This article analyses the effects of the devolution of the French education system on the Education General Inspectorates. Based on a “public policy sociology” perspective, it uses data from three previous studies to question, through various historical sequences, the scope and modalities of the institutional change of these inspections and beyond them, the current transformations of the central regulation of the French education system. It shows that these bodies did not have to reposition themselves radically. They rather change gradually according to the policy configurations.

— The establishment of an internal auditing function in the State's central administration and the possible renewal of the inspection and bodies services — In June 2011, a decree and a circular of the Prime Minister launched the establishment of an internal audit function within the State central administration, in order to renew the modalities of control and to conform them to the professional norms of the internal audit. The application of this reform regards the inspection services (Inspectorates) of all the ministries. Their practices are homogenized. The effects of the reform rely not only on the interpretation of the internal audit function which will prevail in the public administration, but also on the mere acceptance of the audit and of the reform itself in a context which is not entirely favorable to them.

— A strategic project for the General Inspectorate of the Public Administration — Facing an increase of demands, like the recent involvement in the policies of administrative reform, the General Inspectorate of the Public Administration (IGA) gave itself a look on the nature and the objectives of its activities. As a result, a strategic project of service was issued. The project focuses on three guide lines: helping the administration to carry out its tasks with efficiency, improving performance and reform; accompanying territorial changes, ensuring articulation and optimal complementarity between state and local authorities and finally contributing to the preservation of the bond of trust between the administration and the citizen. To implement these guidelines the general inspectorate engaged itself to reinforce its expertise according to four axis: core competencies, quality of its work, management and valorization of its work.

— The evolution of competences within the State's inspectorates: the example of the General Inspectorate for social affairs — The professional environment of State's inspectorate services has evolved over the past years. This testimony shows what are the consequences of these evolutions on the General Inspectorate for Social Affairs (IGAS). This inspectorate moved from being originally a service centered on control and evaluation to being one developing a range of missions such as auditing, counselling and provisional administration. Auditing distinguished itself by the application of inter‑ministerial norms. Provisional administration implies developing high managerial competencies in methodologies of transitional management. Nonetheless, one shouldn't overstate the evolution of these missions: transitional management stays fairly marginal in its frequency and auditing does not lead to a break away from the control and evaluation practices. The main novelty consists in IGAS's mobilization in helping the administration reform process. Furthermore IGAS limited means should lead to a greater selectivity and to a focus on the high stakes affairs.

— The evolution of the General Control of the Armies: Striking a balance — The Defence Ministry's general Inspectorate, CGA, has progressively evolved to adapt itself to the mutations taking place in the field of defense and armies. This evolution has had two tendencies: on one hand it has confirmed the CGA's fundamental characteristics and unique place in the Defence ministry while, on the other, it has adapted itself to a professional environment influenced by the methods of auditing, performance and evaluation. At the crossings of the military, industrial and administrative spheres which compose the Defense ministry governance trilogy, the CGA has embraced the evolutions of each of them in order to harmonize its governance, to develop a renowned expertise and to elaborate an independent point of view, guarantee of a well‑rounded approach to the Defence ministry benefit.

— Internal Auditing, lever of modernisation for inspectorates: The example of the General Economic and Financial Control — The General Economic and Financial Control (CGEFI) has developed since 2008 an audit function, certified by IFACI, which now covers several areas of activity. CGEFI's investment in this new profession of auditing is part of a comprehensive approach of the inspection's professionalization, monitoring and consulting. This contribution illustrates the key elements of leverage that constitute the development of the audit function in the CGEFI's strategy of modernisation : professionalisation of services, building of partnerships, assessing impact and monitoring findings and recommendations.

— The French Court of Accounts: From control to evaluation — In 2008, the French Court of Accounts was granted the constitutional mission to participate in the evaluation of public policies. As already done in a previous new mission, the certification of State accounts, this complex task was put in place through an intense reassessment of its methods. Henceforth better equipped, the Court's magistrates and rapporteurs started in their first evaluation jobs.

— Characteristics of the evaluations realised by the inspectorate bodies in the framework of the Modernisation of Public Action Policy — Between 2012 and 2014, the inspectorates services have realized almost all of the sixty public policy evaluations scheduled by governmental decision in the framework of the Modernization of Public Action policy. These evaluations present innovative features with respect to the usual work carried on by the inspectorate bodies. They require the systematic involvement of stakeholders during the process and, if possible, they should assess the impacts on the beneficiaries of the evaluated action. They may also be conceived as a process to enable effective transformation of the public policy evaluated, provided that they meet a number of conditions. The characterisation of this new type of mission is to better distinguish on the one hand, evaluation missions, and on the other, their usual tasks of control, audit or performance audit.

— Canadian perspectives on a few stakes relating to the activity of auditing, counselling and evaluation in public administration — In the public administration language «inspection» takes the form of checks made during or immediately after the execution of a task. But it also includes new dimensions as control, audit, consulting and normative evaluation. Evaluation is broader than the missions of the bodies in charge of it (pre‑execution, response to what and why, relevance, ongoing monitoring of implementation, etc.). This article regards four major challenges of the inspection according to the Canadian and Quebec experience: methodological issues (a combination of quantitative and qualitative aspects and intersectoral issues); the need for multiple skills; tracking ROI evaluations and inspections and finally the challenge of their usefulness considering that several policies avoid accountability by stating vague objectives.

— Changes in the functions of public administration inspection: a perspective — Do the heritage and tradition of the State's inspection bodies (inspectorates) agree with the metamorphoses that are taking place? If the professionals' personal experiences tend to emphasize “change”, institutions are also spaces of invariance. Beginning with a reflection about the difficulty of thinking about change, the author puts forward a few precautions. The second concept analyzed is the one of “control” and the problems it raises. Indeed, “control” in practice is always localized, written in specific institutional knowhow. It is not necessarily a trans‑institutionally shared notion and it has a non‑negligible part of self‑persuasion. However events such as LOLF, RGPP and MAP contributed to reinvent the state, bypassing the public/private divide through a “governance by numbers”. These changes involve, for the inspectorates, a passage from the search for “regularity” to “performance” which in turn involves the development of a range of activities and certain institutional innovations.

— Joys and woes of management control in politics. For a “new political management” — The model of management by objectives and management control formally invaded the field of the implementation of public policies. The major event here being the 2001 new constitutional by law on finance bills (LOLF). Convergent analyses show that objectives and national indicators of the LOLF system didn't reach its aim, while other similar exercises, led in the fields of social security and sustainable development, seem to work better. This article explains this situation by the fundamental difference of nature between the so‑called «objective» in politics and in management. Therefore, it highlights the need to reconsider the dogmas of ‘new public management' and to care about the construction by the whole of the State apparatus and its partners of domains of consensus on the meaning of the action to be undertaken. Such a construction is the sine qua none condition of the renewing of trust, initiative and effectiveness in a society more and more complex and over informed.

— Evolution of external reporting indicators: the case of the indicators contained in the annual performance projects and reports attached to the finance bills — This study focuses on the changes made between 2006 and 2012 in the set of goals and indicators presented to the Parliament to support budget requests. This longitudinal study is based on the examination of four programs: Heritage, Higher Education and Academic Research, National Police, Development of Business and Employment. After assessing the importance of changes made during the period of seven years, the aim of this study is to analyze the evolution of the performance measurement system introduced by the LOLF.

— Can the public developmental aid be more effective? — On the basis of the experiences within developmental agencies, this paper questions the efficacy of developmental public aid. Today's main agencies still function for many reasons on a model which can be considered as old by the current standards. The paper tries to understand the mains reasons why, notwithstanding the critiques of the 1980s, the search for efficacy in public developmental aid has yet to be integrated in its daily practice. The two reasons put forward here are first that obtaining visible and fast results are a priority and second that we witness an increasing tendency to bureaucratization. Both are counter‑productive and cannot lead to genuine changes. The article concludes by proposing a few directions in which efficacy could be promoted in this field.