Servants of the public ?

One the more surprising and at the same time revealing moments of the crisis of the “gilets jaunes” was a scene broadcast on the evening news some time ago in which a pensioner thrust his pay slip into the hands of Emmanuel Macron on a walkabout and demanded to know why he was receiving €100 less from one month to the next. In full view of the attendant cameras, Macron considered the piece of paper, explained some of the deductions but after poring over the slip for a minute or so, ended up admitting that he couldn’t answer the question!

There are a number of conclusions that can be drawn from this scene and none reflect well on the enormous French administrative machine and the army of civil servants who run it: the first is that pay slips, like so many other official papers, letters and circulars either from, or in the form required by, the French administration are frequently not easy to understand. The number of lines in a pay slip, detailing all the deductions described in acronyms like CSG, CASA, CRDS etc. is probably pretty incomprehensible to most employees, even those who have completed high school - notwithstanding that two of them disappeared during 2018. Little wonder that most people only look at the bottom line which is their take-home pay and are not fully aware that such deductions from their gross salary correspond to their contributions to health care, unemployment, occupational accident insurance and pension.  It is true of course that their employers’ contributions to these same services are much higher.

More generally, the big and largely successful effort made some years ago in the British civil service to write “plain English” and make official letters and circulars more easily comprehensible even to the least educated members of society has not yet been seriously considered, let alone copied in France. Perhaps now that 80% of any age group pass their school leaving baccalauréat at 18, it is generally considered that they are well armed to understand opaque civil service prose and abstruse acronyms! There was, it is true, under the Hollande presidency, an attempt to simplify many administrative procedures. A Simplification Committee was even set up. It doesn’t seem to have simplified very much and, more importantly perhaps, its remit didn’t run to actually simplifying the language in which such procedures are written.

Another conclusion that can be drawn from the scene mentioned above is that public services are not always easily accessible and that many civil servants are not doing their job properly even when they are. One imagines the pensioner referred to above trying to call an official from the pension service to ask about the series of deductions that he clearly does not understand. The chances are that after being asked repeatedly, by a suave and usually female recorded voice to the accompaniment of a repetitive and irritating jingle, to press 1, 2 or 3 on his keypad, he will end up with a recorded message saying either that his call will be answered in no more than 10 minutes or that nobody is available to answer it and that he should please call back later. Should he be lucky enough to live close enough to an administrative office and try to consult a real live official, he can expect to wait for quite some time before being called forward - the whole process usually taking the best part of half a day. But there are fewer and fewer such offices. In my home town of over 20 thousand people in the Paris area, the social security office has been closed down and moved 20 kilometers down the road. If you live in a rural area you would be lucky to find an office within 50 kilometers of your home. As to the state-run pension service, it has been “streamlined” over the years and only one national telephone number is now available for queries.

Little wonder that anger and frustration have built up among people who do not understand the constant changes to legislation and regulations that can have a big impact on their pensions or other benefits. The lack of understanding and access to another human being who can give comprehensible and reassuring explanations breeds suspicion if not downright hostility. 

The French system is surely not alone in these failings. Even if the French have coined the adjective “kafkaien”, derived from Franz Kafka’s stories, to describe the cruel absurdity, seeming indifference and real opacity of an administrative system,  it is little comfort to a flummoxed French pensioner to be told that it can be a lot worse in other countries, particularly the U.K, as anybody who has seen Ken Loach’s film “I, Daniel Blake” will know.

To be fair though, there are timid attempts in France to bring the administration closer to the people, especially those who are scattered throughout mainland France's countless rural areas. A network of public service hubs (Maisons de Services au Public) is being set up, complete with computers, internet connections and dedicated phone lines, where people can go and either call or connect to a number of public services. On TV the other night, a pensioner was seen asking for help from the sole employee at the desk of one of these newly opened facilities. He refused to help out in a rather surly manner, saying that if he left his desk, he would be unable to answer other queries. As is often the case, the idea is sound, but the initial implementation is poor and the front-line staff apparently unprepared and probably untrained. The latest official figure puts the number of these hubs at 1281 but many are still a long way from where some people live.

Interestingly, in the nationwide consultation in connection with the “Great Debate”, two questions asked whether respondents would like to see itinerant public services or multi-purpose civil servants who could answer a series of administrative questions on anything from health care to unemployment benefits and pensions. It has also been reported recently that following the loosening of criteria for income related tax benefits (crédit d’impôt), 340 extra officials have been recruited to help claimants fill out their application forms at local family allowance offices.

This is surely a positive move but behind it lies the whole question of a root and branch reform of the very organisation of public services in France that would make them more accessible to people, regardless of their claim or query or where they live. Ideally, answers to such calls and queries, providing incomplete and sometimes incomprehensible answers should give way to a pro-active attitude where front-line public servants would provide accurate and straightforward answers to queries and provide information about rights and how to claim them. This would surely do a lot to relieve legitimate frustration and hostility. The timid attempts so far show that there is at least an awareness in high places of the need to act in this way but it is very early days yet, and it will take time as well as long and difficult negotiations with the powerful civil service unions to break many entrenched habits and turn an army of mouse clickers, often barely visible behind their large screens, into people who can be truly called servants of the public !