Good Practices in Labour Administration

Organization of Internal Evaluation: General Inspectorate of Social Affairs

The case of France

The French Ministry of Labour has an internal evaluation body which, since 1967, has been united with the health and social affairs inspectorate: the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs (IGAS).

This body is charged with evaluating the operation of but also the policies carried out by the ministry. It examines, either on the instructions of the ministry or as part of its own annual agenda, the relevance of policies in the fields of labour and employment or vocational training and health and social issues, as well as verifying the operation of the public or private bodies responsible for implementing these policies.

Thus, in 1996, the IGAS carried out a survey of the decentralized services of the Ministry of Employment ("The transfer of the services of the Ministry of Labour").

The IGAS was established in 1967 by a law grouping together several distinct supervisory bodies particular to various sectors dealing with social and labour issues. It is a monitoring, evaluation and assessment body which looks not only into the Ministry(ies) of Labour and Social Affairs (there may be one or several depending on changes in the composition of the government), but also various partly state-owned organizations, or even those which are legally independent of the ministry but which receive public funds or appeal to public generosity in order to carry out the duties entrusted to them.

A law of 1996 rendered the interventionist powers of the IGAS applicable to all institutions within the field of social services, including non-governmental organizations, and gave legal status to the annual report procedure.

The IGAS is generally charged with evaluating public policies implemented by the social services ministries. It monitors public or private bodies responsible for providing extended social protection in the widest sense of the word. It also caries out surveys which may enlighten the government as to the current situation and enables proposals to be made concerning changes in public activities.

It also carries out assessments of the internal operation of the bodies concerned, on the request of those bodies.

A think tank was set up in 1999 to examine the methods of evaluating managerial and executive staff and promotion proposals, activities which until 1999 it carried out together with the technical directorates concerned.

Being a general inspectorate, IGAS occupies a special place in the organization chart of the social services ministries: it is placed immediately next to the Minister. Therefore, together with the ministerial technical services, it has no hierarchical link which could restrict its freedom of judgement. Nevertheless, it is not an independent or autonomous agency and its officials are employees of the labour and social affairs administrations.

IGAS has a small structure comprising a few "permanent assignments" such as the "methodology training" assignment or the "first-degree inspection" assignment. However, the majority of its activities are organized in the form of assignments lasting for a certain number of months and which do not take account of the particular specializations of its members.

Moreover, IGAS inspectors are placed at the disposal of the Supervisory Committee for mutual benefit societies and provident institutions, an independent administrative authority, in order to help the Committee to carry out its own monitoring on-site. This activity is becoming more and more important.

A follow-up Committee examines the consequences of the recommendations made by the inspectors approximately a year after the filing of their reports.

IGAS may likewise intervene at the request of the Prime Minister or the other members of the government, but may not itself initiate an investigation that would fall outside its jurisdiction.

A broad field of intervention

IGAS assignments are determined according to the texts under which it was established. These texts likewise indicate the powers of the inspectors; in particular, they have free access to all State administrations and public organizations, services, establishments or institutions falling within the scope of IGAS. These bodies are required to offer their assistance.

Each year, the head of IGAS defines the programme of activity in collaboration with the central administration heads and depending on the observations which were made in previous years. This annual programme is approved by the Ministry(ies) of Labour and Social Affairs.

Moreover, specific assignments are allocated by the Minister when a major malfunction in a service or institution falling under the jurisdiction of IGAS occurs. IGAS may also be entrusted with an inspection assignment in conjunction with another of the State inspection services such as the General Finance Inspectorate, the General Administration Inspectorate and the General Inspectorate of Legal Services.

Finally, an annual report is published which recounts part of the activities and results of the work carried out by IGAS (see below).

In order to assess the operation of a service or system set up by the authorities, IGAS inspectors carry out an evaluation according to a traditional method: interviews with those in charge of the system being investigated, interviews with the officials charged with its implementation and most often with those benefiting therefrom, examination of administrative and accounts documents, reconciliation of different sources of information, a possible statistical survey followed by the drafting of a provisional and confidential report. This report mainly puts forward proposals aimed at improving or disposing of the system if it is clearly ineffective with regard to the objectives fixed. It is submitted for observation to those in charge of the system. Once these observations have been recorded, the report is referred to the "commanding officer" (more often than not the Minister of Employment) who may then take decisions on the basis of the report. In principle, IGAS reports remain confidential, mainly because they involve judicial procedures. The Minister may decide to publish them or circulate them amongst the people or organizations concerned.

Until 1999, IGAS also participated in the process of evaluating officials in charge of the decentralized employment and social affairs services. IGAS inspectors therefore conduct in-depth staff interviews based on an evaluation scale; assessments are moderated to take account of possible bias on the part of the assessor. These evaluations mainly take place when an official is put forward for promotion. They may also be requested by an official who feels that he has not been correctly evaluated by his superior during an annual appraisal.

This procedure is carried out in close cooperation with the labour administration and social affairs administrative directorates and with all the central and regional services falling within the domain of labour and social affairs.

Today, the role of IGAS in the evaluation of those in charge of the decentralized labour and social affairs services is being re-examined. The reform of this procedure in consultation with the management directorates of the staff being evaluated should lead to better assessment of the capabilities of these managerial officials.

Specific highly qualified personnel

IGAS officials are senior civil servants belonging to a body specializing in evaluation and monitoring assignments, the body of the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs which was given independent status in a decree published in 1990.

IGAS officials, classed in the top category of French civil servants, are divided into three levels: deputy inspectors, inspectors and general inspectors. There are around 80 in actual service, half of whom are graduates of the Ecole nationale d'administration (ENA) - training college for senior French civil servants following recruitment through a competitive examination -, while the rest are employees of the other Social Services Ministries: the labour inspectorate, the decentralized departments of health and social security, hospital directors, etc.

Their operations are managed by the head of IGAS, whilst the technical management is the responsibility of the general human resources management division of the Ministry of Social Affairs as part of French civil service rules which notably provide for equal participation of staff representatives in the collective and individual management of personnel on joint administrative or technical committees.

The performances of inspectorate officials are evaluated by the head of the body under the normal conditions for evaluating managerial staff employed by the Ministries of Social Affairs. This evaluation may have an effect on their supplementary salaries.

In addition to the training offered to all officials employed by the Ministries of Social Affairs, IGAS inspectors benefit from a training programme in line with their duties both when they initially take up their post and later according to their needs, notably with regard to all matters concerning accounting procedures within the organizations being monitored, a large number of which follow the private sector.

Inspectors who have recently entered the service are assisted by their more experienced colleagues when undertaking field assignments and are in turn appointed deputy to the head of IGAS, thus providing them with full knowledge of the activities of the service.

Human and budgetary resources

IGAS is administered under the direction of the head of the service who is assisted by an administrative team of approximately thirty officials.

IGAS as a whole employed some 120 officials in 1998.

The uniformity of the body and the reduced number of personnel enable basic retirement provisions to be taken into account when planning the future workforce in order to ensure an equal balance in the age pyramid of the body. The extent of this practice is, however, limited by large budgetary constraints with regard to personnel.

In order to carry out their duties, inspectors have access to modern tools (portable microcomputers, document databases, Internet) but the activities of IGAS are not organized in accordance with these techniques.

IGAS has an operational budget corresponding to the number of established posts. Given the nature of its assignments, the amount of money spent per official is greater than in other sectors of the Ministries of Social Affairs. Since it is not a body which dispenses public money, it does not have an operational budget.

The use of its budget is subject to ordinary public accounting procedures (this is the responsibility of the financial controller appointed by the Ministry of Finance, as in every ministerial department).

The social partners are not involved with the operation of IGAS on an organizational level. However, on a national level, the employers' and workers' unions are in regular contact with the Minister. They may draw the Minister's attention to any difficulties arising in the operation of services or concerning any policy which has been unsatisfactorily implemented in order to prompt intervention by IGAS.

Publication of the IGAS annual report is a guarantee of the usefulness of its observations

The IGAS annual report is drawn up by the operational inspectors and is coordinated by the head of the service. The topics discussed in the annual report may give rise to several inquiries concerning various aspects relating to the main subject of the report. The report also discusses a few "selected parts" of the work carried out during the previous year.

Since the beginning of this publication procedure (1962), all the areas falling within the jurisdiction of the social services ministries and other institutions within this field have been regularly investigated by IGAS.

Its intervention generally remains an internal affair concerning only the administration and the organizations being monitored. Nevertheless, certain in-depth investigations have had considerable repercussions for the general public: in the field of employment, the 1994 study concerning the merging of the two organizations responsible for employment and employment compensation gave rise, in 1997, to the establishment of a "single window" for the compensation of job seekers who were previously obliged to carry out the same formalities with both organizations. As regards charitable schemes in the field of medicine, a thorough investigation of a fund-raising agency for cancer research became famous when it gave rise to legal proceedings.

The permanent nature of the evaluation and monitoring tasks assigned to IGAS and the regularity of its reports, which are both public and are produced annually, guarantee its internal evaluation operation and give it a certain standing in the eyes of the Minister(s) of Labour and Social Affairs.