The dematerialization of administrative procedures always creates inequalities of access to public services, said Tuesday, February 15 the Defender of Rights Claire Hédon in a report entitled: “Dematerialization of public services: three years later, where are we?” This dematerialization must not replace paper or the telephone, but remain “an additional offer”.
In 2019, the Defender of Rights Jacques Toubon warned of the risks and excesses linked to the generalization of the dematerialization of administrative procedures. While the public authorities seem to have been sensitive to the observations made three years ago, the Defender of Rights Claire Hédon notes that “the number of alerts and complaints related to dematerialization is not declining”.
Every year, more than 80% of the complaints addressed to the institution relate to difficulties linked to public services. According to the report, nearly one in four French people expresses the feeling of living in a territory neglected by the public authorities. “Every day, users are faced with the impossibility of completing an administrative procedure, come up against a lack of response, struggle to contact a contact person or find the door closed.” As in 2019, 13 million people are in difficulty with digital in our country and are “those left out of dematerialization.”
As three years ago, the Defender of Rights points out the specific difficulties encountered by certain audiences. Thus, protected adults and detainees have not seen their situation improve. Foreigners are even more massively prevented from carrying out their formalities. Elderly people, who are still often far from digital, young people, less at ease than one might think with dematerialized administration, and disabled people, who still do not have to deal with accessible public services, also encounter significant difficulties.
The report emphasizes that digital approaches appear to be a sometimes insurmountable obstacle for people in socially precarious situations.
The institution also considers that the quality of sites and dematerialized procedures still suffers from considerable shortcomings. Some people who previously were able to carry out their procedures on their own are no longer able to do so.
“The effects of dematerialization concern us all”asserts the Defender, because “everyone, one day, may encounter an incomprehensible blockage when faced with an online form”. According to her, we rest “on the shoulders of the user or his caregivers the burden and responsibility for the proper functioning of the procedure.”
“We are actually asking users to do more so that the administration does less and saves resources.”
The Defender of Rightsat franceinfo
This dematerialization brings “attack on the principle of equal access to public service”estimates the ratio, and puts “endangering our social cohesion, nour sense of common belonging, and runs the risk of weakening democratic participation, in all its dimensions.”
The Defender of Rights proposes “reversing the perspective, and offering users the possibility of really choosing their modes of interaction with the administrations so that the public service adapts to the needs and realities of the users and not the reverse”. She hears “return to the basics of public service”. Thus, the dematerialization of administrative procedures “would register as an additional and non-substitute offer at the counter, by paper mail or by telephone”. This would make it possible to think about the organization of the public service “not from the expectations and priorities of the administrations, but from the real situation of the people, which must be recognized and taken into account, in all its complexity.”