INFO EUROPE 1
In three weeks of confinement, telework has become the norm for a large part of French companies. For the public service, on the other hand, the machine had a harder time getting started. This is due to a culture of remote work which is not very present in the ministries and the state services, to a low rate of equipment in laptops and to software not always adapted. But after three weeks, the state has taken the plunge: according to information collected by Europe 1, the number of officials in telework has been multiplied by four since the beginning of confinement.
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200,000 state employees in telework
It is now 200,000 agents of public state services who are able to work at home in conditions similar to those of their office. And tens of thousands more are in partial telework. In comparison, there were only 50,000 ready to tip over when containment was introduced. This figure concerns so-called "office" civil servants, those who work in ministries, central administration and regional state services such as tax centers and prefectures. Obviously, hospital staff and police are not affected by telework. The approximately 870,000 secondary school teachers have been compulsory since the closure of all schools.
"We are not 100% public agents in teleworking, of course, far from it. But the IT services of the State have tried to provide as many agents as possible with the tools necessary to keep the public service in the best form. less degraded possible ", underlines Nadi Bou Hanna, the boss of Dinum, the interdepartmental Direction of digital, responsible for piloting the digital transformation of the State and which supervises for three weeks the deployment of telework.
Bercy, an (almost) perfect model
Take an example: the Ministry of the Economy. According to our information, of the 130,000 Bercy agents, only 19,000 are still in the field today, barely 15% of the workforce. In addition to the teams of ministers on deck, they are mainly customs officers or hospital treasurers who cannot leave their assignment. The 110,000 other agents are at home, of which 33,000 are 100% teleworking and 48,000 are in childcare. Bercy also lists nearly 2,000 agents who are sick or in their fortnight after being in contact with a person infected with the coronavirus.
# Paris # Bercy
Sunday evening confined. pic.twitter.com/w5SrxmsPdh
With 25% of teleworkers, Bercy is therefore rather a good student even if everything is not perfect: 24,000 agents of the ministry are at home but without the possibility of telework, either because their position does not allow it, or because they don't have a good internet network. Result, they do not work but remain paid. A form of partial unemployment but, unlike the private sector, this situation is 100% compensated by the State. "There are white areas on the territory and agents who could not be equipped, but with the work carried out in recent weeks, these are minority cases", assures Nadi Bou Hanna, the boss of Dinum.
"We only have old phones, not even smartphones"
Minority cases, of course, but that do exist. With their share of problems. Under the cover of anonymity, a regional manager of the DGCCRF, the organization in charge of the repression of fraud, entrusts Europe 1 with its dismay. "We are a very small team but we have just the equivalent of a computer for three! Ditto for business phones. In addition they are only old models, not even smartphones," she laments. "We also don't have a VPN ( software to access a remote server, editor's note ). So we can't consult our files. All we can do is answer emails and go to 'drive' of large surfaces to make price surveys ... "
Not easy either in National Education. The ministry has set up, with the help of the CNED, the "My class at home" device which enables videoconferencing. Digital diaries also exist within establishments. But teachers and students are not always equipped to provide or follow lessons remotely, like Florent, a physics and chemistry professor in a college. "We were not provided anything. The equipment is ours," he laments. "And software level, it is not much better. All the establishments have an ENT, a digital workspace. But it is very poor compared to other software that we find on the net. as if we were being sold a Peugeot 205 in 2020. It's rolling but it's not terrible ... "
Recycling of old computers
Despite these shortcomings, the changeover of the public service to teleworking remains a tour de force, due to the size of the operation which concerns, at different scales, millions of civil servants (in addition to State services and teachers, there are also the territorial collectivities which manage on their own). Especially since remote working was set up in an emergency, with the means at hand. "It was mainly the hardware that was lacking. There were not enough up-to-date and secure computers to provide 50 or 60% of civil servants," admits Nadi Bou Hanna, interdepartmental director of digital technology. . "So we bought a number of them and recycled old, almost obsolete computers, which we updated and updated and patched up."
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In terms of software, the Tchap messaging, specially designed for civil servants and launched a year ago, went from 50,000 to 140,000 users in three weeks (including 70,000 in regional services). And collaborative work platforms, Osmose and Plano, were deployed in fast motion at the end of March. To go even further, the IT services of the State are particularly active in transforming personal computers into professional computers. Nadi Bou Hanna already draws lessons from this sequence: "The crisis we are experiencing highlights the crucial importance of digital technology to ensure the continuity of public service."