They write white-branded government reports, sometimes have government e-mail addresses … The practices of private consultants question the influence of consulting firms involved in the state.
On February 25, 2020, the Ministry of National Education writes to the Associate Director of the McKinsey Consultant Cabinet. Purpose of the message: Reporting the “Copil [Steering Committee] McKinsey” scheduled for the next day for the minister Jean-Michel Blanquer, “can participate, because such is his wish.” What imprudence! “Do not call this instance” Copil McKinsey “[but]” Copil DITP Teacher XXI “”, rectifies the consultant back. And to insist: “It’s important that it appears in the agendas.”
This exchange of e-mails, revealed by the recent report of the Senate Survey Board on the influence of consulting firms, overflows the government’s speech, criticized for its appeal recurrent, even systematic, to private experts. Their role is “very clear,” assured the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, during his hearing by senators, in January .
Stop “Fantasy of private firms that would shoot the strings in the shadows”, took up the member Macronier Cendra Motin on March 18, in L ‘ Opinion . “The criterion for me is that it does not come to replace things that we know how to do ourselves and it is done in a transparent and controllable way,” added Emmanuel Macron on M6 on March 23rd.
Documents signed by the State, designed among the consultants
The example of the “Copil McKinsey” is not an isolated case. The same firm written in Its quote transmitted to the Ministry of Health in December 2020 which it will intervene in a “confidential” way on the vaccine campaign. And the American sector giant is far from alone. If he and his competitors have become unavoidable in the small and large sites of the state, their name is very rarely associated publicly.
This shows the question of “deliverables”, these files, reports or PowerPoint presentations that materialize the intellectual production of consultants. In some cases, the intervention of a private enterprise is clearly mentioned. For example, in A report from the Ministry of the Economy and Finance of 2019 on artificial intelligence, it It is specified that the editorial was entrusted to the Cabinet Atawao Consulting.
But, often, the paw of private companies is invisible. This is the case for the missions entrusted to Capgemini as part of the launch of the Health Data Hub, a large public platform that compiles many medical data for research purposes. According to our information, the cabinet coecribed The prefiguration report of the project with its official signatories in 2018, ranging up the last hand. However, the only explicit mention of the company in this document is that six of its members would have been auditioned or encountered by the authors.
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