## Notes from 23 December 2025 [[2025-12-22|← Previous note]] ┃ [[2025-12-24|Next note →]] So literally one day after reading the brief criticizing France's senior civil service reform for becoming ritualized without impact, I find this report from [April 2025](https://blog.landot-avocats.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Rapport-Igas-IGF-IGA-Formation-continue-des-cadres-superieurs-de-letat-et-role-de-lINSP-2025_1.pdf) on continuing education for senior officials and INSP's role. The report's mandate was to evaluate the continuing education system for senior civil servants and assess whether INSP is effectively playing its coordinating role. What they found is a mess of fragmented offerings, unclear governance, insufficient resources, and an institution (INSP) that's struggling to define its mission while being pulled in multiple directions. ### Fragmentation and under-investment The report documents what they call an "_éclatement_" (fragmentation) of the continuing education landscape. There are something like 130+ training programs spread across ministries, grandes écoles, private providers, and various coordinating bodies. No one has a comprehensive view of what's being offered, who's taking what, what the total investment is, or whether any of it is working. Some numbers: - INSP delivers only about 4,000 training days per year for senior officials (this seems incredibly low for a population of ~20,000 senior/executive officials) - Ministerial training offerings vastly outweigh interministerial ones - No centralized data on participation rates, completion, satisfaction, or impact - Budget for senior official training is "difficult to quantify" because it's dispersed across so many entities The report finds that INSP has failed to establish itself as the reference institution for senior civil service training. It's caught between multiple missions - initial training for new recruits, continuing education, research, international outreach - without sufficient resources or clear prioritization for any of them (exactly the same lack of focus that I see in the Brazilian [[ENAP]]). ### The INSP identity crisis There's a fascinating section on INSP's positioning challenges. When they replaced ENA in 2022, the idea was to break with the elitist image and create something more open, diverse, and focused on public service values versus technocratic formation. But the report suggests INSP is caught between competing visions: - **Vision 1:** INSP as the Harvard Kennedy School of France - prestigious institution for senior leadership development, mix of practitioners and academics, high-level programming, international reach - **Vision 2:** INSP as HR service provider - practical training offerings tied to career management system, responsive to ministerial demands, focus on skill development - **Vision 3:** INSP as coordination hub - light institutional structure that orchestrates the broader ecosystem of training providers, sets quality standards, doesn't try to do everything itself The report argues (gently) that INSP has been trying to be all three simultaneously while lacking resources for any single vision. The result is that it's not excellent at anything. Initial training for new _administrateurs_ takes up most of the bandwidth. Continuing education is an afterthought. The research and international functions exist on paper but have minimal substance. ### The governance problem The report identifies a "_gouvernance éclatée et peu lisible_" (fragmented and unclear governance) problem. There are too many actors with overlapping or unclear responsibilities: - [[Institut National du Service Public (INSP)]] itself (initial + continuing training, research, international) - [[Délégation Interministérielle à l’Encadrement Supérieur de l’État (DIESE)]] (talent management, career development, but also commissions some training) - [DGAFP](https://www.fonction-publique.gouv.fr/la-dgafp) (sets overall civil service policy, but limited operational role) - Ministerial training structures (vast majority of actual training delivery) - Délégués ministériels à l'encadrement supérieur (ministerial delegates for senior management - another coordinating layer) - Other grandes écoles and universities - Private training providers Nobody's clearly in charge of the overall strategy. INSP nominally has a coordination role but lacks authority and resources to exercise it effectively. DIESE focuses on talent management but training is fragmented from career development. Ministries do their own thing because they have the budgets and operational needs. The result is the classic coordination failure: lots of activity, minimal coherence, no ability to assess aggregate impact or make strategic decisions about investment priorities. ### What they recommend The report has 22 recommendations organized around four axes. The interesting thing is how modest and incremental they are - this is clearly a case of inspectors seeing deep structural problems but knowing that radical proposals would be ignored, so they're suggesting achievable steps: - **Strengthen INSP's coordination role:** Give it clearer mandate, more resources, authority to set standards and validate offerings, create a comprehensive training catalog, establish quality framework - **Better connect training to career management:** Integrate training requirements into promotion criteria, make participation in key programs part of career progression, link DIESE talent review process to development planning - **Develop flagship programs:** Create high-visibility leadership development programs (like [UK's Major Projects Leadership Academy](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5dea3512e5274a06d662b1b8/MPLA_Handbook_for_IPA_Website__2_.pdf) that become markers of seniority and create cross-institutional cohorts - **Improve data and evaluation:** Establish comprehensive information system to track participation, investment, satisfaction, and where possible, impact on career outcomes and organizational performance - **Clarify governance:** Define respective roles of INSP, DIESE, DGAFP, and ministerial structures more clearly, reduce overlap, establish clear accountability for results Reading between the lines, what they're really saying is: the current system is a disaster, INSP is not fulfilling the role it was created for, nobody's in charge, we have no idea if any of this training works, and we need to start over with clearer mandates and actual resources. But they're saying it diplomatically. ### What's missing The report focuses almost entirely on institutional structure and governance. There's surprisingly little about content - what should senior officials actually be learning? There is no systematic thinking about which competencies matter most, how to develop them effectively, how to adapt to changing needs. Also minimal attention to the user experience. What do senior officials actually want from continuing education? The report mentions survey data suggesting low satisfaction with current offerings, but doesn't deeply engage with what would make training valuable from the perspective of busy executives with demanding jobs.