The Court of Auditors points to “inappropriate” recourses to consulting firms and calls on the State to “better control” this practice

The Court of Auditors calls on the State to clarify the rules governing the use of private consulting firms, a practice that must be “better controlled” despite recent administrative progress. More than a year after the Senate report which described as “sprawling phenomenon” the missions entrusted by the State to these private companies, the institution is concerned about certain uses “inappropriate” in a new report released Monday, July 10.

In particular, the Court accuses the State of allowing certain private service providers to carry out missions falling within the “core business of the administration”and even “intervene in the decision-making process”. Practices denounced in March 2022 by Communist Senator Eliane Assassi and her Republican colleague Arnaud Bazin. Their report, released a few weeks before the presidential election, had embarrassed Emmanuel Macron, singled out for his alleged proximity to the American firm McKinsey.

Expenses to “adjust”

In the report published on Monday, the Court of Auditors considers that the use of private consultants has become a “easy way out” for an administration with constrained means and deadlines. The financial magistrates insist: they have not “objection in principle” To “outsourcing part of the tasks” administration. But this outsourcing must find “a more adjusted and better controlled place among the various instruments of the administrations to carry out their missions”they say.

In 2021, the services ordered by the State from consultants cost 233.6 million euros, or 0.04% of State expenditure. By including the services ordered from firms in the IT field, the bill climbs to 890 million, a total very close to the 893.9 million listed in the Senate report. Between 2017 and 2021, state council spending tripled.