Les chambres régionales des comptes

NATIONAL POSITION, LOCAL POSITION : EXAMINATION OF MANAGEMENT TO THE EVALUATION OF THE PUBLIC POLICIES

It is now a question of attaching the analysis of the capacities of mobilization of the actors to the cleaving stakes of the sector in which they evolve/move.

[1) A magistrate is not Préfet : two bodies of the king

It is at the time of the establishment of this report/ratio that the most eminent representatives of the institution of the accounts and the representatives of the prefectoral body could define their position. Mr. Pierre Joxe, President of the Court of Auditors, had thus the occasion to explain that the articulation between the control of legality and the control of management was not very satisfactory.

Joel Thoraval, Prefect of the Area Island-of-France, President of the association of the prefectoral body, also underlined to him the complexity of the interactions between the financial magistrate and the territorial representative of the State for financial control. However, it added that the regional rooms played a part growing in the regulation of decentralization, thus contributing to reinforce the feeling of legal insecurity among the elected officials, dependant on the double constraint, legal and financial. It nevertheless recognized that the prefects had a discrétionnaire capacity of appreciation of the irregularities and that the Prefect had « to take account of local realities ».

As it is seen, the position of the representative of the Prefects is not exactly same as that of the representative of the financial magistrates. It is true that the institution of the rooms is recent and that it quickly evolved/moved. Remain that all the actors have on this occasion, in particular under the impulse of the elected officials, become aware of the slip towards more complex financial problems. Like recalled it Maître De Castelnau during its hearing, external financial controls at the European level will do nothing but reinforce the legitimacy of bodies of independent financial controls.

[2) The control of management or the evaluation of the public policies ?

For Mrs Danièle Lamarque^91(*), « the examination of management covers the axes of control usually described in the international terminology with the audit by the triptych with « 3rd » : economy, efficiency and effectiveness ....... the checking of efficiency (best services at the best cost) hardly starts to be essential. That of the effectiveness (quantification of the rendered service and degree of achievement of the objectives) is still with the outline ................... Management and its control thus have to follow the same evolution, from legal and financial safety towards the follow-up of the performances and the results. The evaluation of the realization of a sporting complex, it is not only the insurance which construction was regularly led : it is also to appreciate a management, means, users, a policy, effects on the life of the city ".

Madam the President is particularly implied in this step aiming at generalizing of the principles of evaluation of the public policies, and it constitutes even a kind of spearhead, since itself made of the National Council of the Evaluation, in membership of the Court of Auditors, which was set up in February 1999 and of which the goal is precisely to develop these problems by integrating the whole of the territorial actors and by multiplying the comparative analyzes^92(*).

This tendency to the diffusion of the model of evaluation of the public policies and it is accepted by the majority of the actors of the system of action because it corresponds to a need for transparency and effectiveness of the public funds. « François Storeroom, charged with the Commission of the methods of the regional Rooms of the accounts, prefers to answer for a precise and quantified example : the last control carried out by the CRC Ile- of-France on the trade union of water of this area made it possible four million inhabitants to save 50 centimes per consumed cubic meter of water.

The control of the room indeed led to the renegotiation of the contract binding the trade union to its service provider with, with the key, 133 million francs of economies, reflected partly on the invoice of subscribed »^93(*).

The intervention of the regional room of the Countries of the Loire on the cultural policy of the town of Nantes took part of the same process. And it here interesting to see on which criteria the magistrates carried out their interventions. They initially defined four families of following parameters : evolution on several exercises on behalf of the cultural sector in the budget of the city while trying to explain the noted tendencies ; priorities of the cultural intervention [distribution by sectors] ; financing of the cultural expenditure and the tariff system ; the cost with the user.

Then, the room proceeded to, the examination of the missions and objectives announced ; loads and budgetary yields ; of the frequentation ; tariffing of the service and resources additional ; relations with complementary cultural equipment ; reception of the journalists, for the opera, and them catalogs of exposure, for the museum ; degree of respect of the budgetary charges ; detail of the staff costs.

And one could note the same thing in Germany. The regional room of Saxony thus compared, relative with installations of water treatment, the cost of the possible modes of management (governed or delegation), i.e. it has to proceed to a traditional mission of audit in order to determine if good use of the funds, i.e. the concept of « Been worth-for-Money », respected. John Sherring, of the Audit Commission off England and Wales, summarizes it very well « The local communities cannot be allowed any more to lose money »^94(*).

In France, a first national mission of public evaluation of the policies took place in 1998 with the investigation into the road roadway system of the departments launched by the Court of Auditors.

For Vincent Potter, General manager of the Services, and Jean-Luc Ox, Secretary-general of Rock-on-Yon, who comment on the activities of the rooms, observe that this phenomenon is recent : « It is a direction in which they launch out, the evaluation with the direction full with the term, i.e. to look at the results compared to the laid down objectives and the means implemented. One had already seen that with the study of the CRC High-Normandy on the Bridge of Normandy. But that becomes quasi systematic on the tourist policy and the economic policy. It should be raised that the rooms have a macro-economic approach, whereas, by comparison, the evaluation of the contracts of plan, for example, too often had a microeconomic approach. »^95(*)

* ⁹¹ The Letter of Public Management, n°30, November-December 2000, p.2.

* ⁹² to see in particular «  The evaluation with the service of the future  », The National Council of the Evaluation, annual report 1999, French documentation, 2.000.

* ⁹³ The Gazette of the Communes, n° 1482 of the 21/11/98, p.6.

* ⁹⁴ City by the Gazette of the Communes, n° 1482 of the 21/11/1998, p.6.

* ⁹⁵ The Gazette of the Communes, n° 1491 of the 01/03/1999, p. 17.