Interview: Antoine Brugidou

Across Europe, nation states are facing very similar problems. The economic downturn has reduced tax receipts, and most countries have to address the increased budget deficits they have run up in the last couple of years. At the same time, the recession has increased demand for certain services – such as unemployment benefits – and the European public has become more demanding. Not only do they want their governments to solve the economic crisis; they also expect them to pitch in with efforts to save the environment and solve problems such as obesity.

For anyone interested in seeing governments sharpen up their act and become lean, mean and green delivery machines, this conundrum of growing demands and declining resources can be seen as an opportunity, not an insurmountable obstacle. “The current crisis can be a very strong accelerator of transformation,” says Antoine Brugidou (pictured above), the health and public service programme director for Europe at consultancy Accenture.

Many countries have already grabbed the bull by the horns. Two years ago president Nicolas Sarkozy of France launched 380 different transformation programmes, covering everything from mergers of agencies and straightforward cost-cutting to LEAN programmes that streamline processes. Brugidou says Germany’s federal states are also embracing change programmes, while Norway is following Sweden’s lead and pushing the e-government agenda. UK civil servants will be pleased to hear that Brugidou considers the UK’s public service reform programme to be “one of the most advanced” in Europe; Sarkozy is, after all, said to have been inspired by Tony Blair’s drive for reform.

As the crisis hits public sector bodies across Europe – and Brugidou is not alone in believing that the public sector squeeze is now starting to bite, just as the private sector crisis starts to ease – more countries are feeling the need to rethink. “The more they are in a bad situation, like Greece or Romania, the more they are making preparations,” he says. In Greece, he adds, 100,000 civil service jobs are to be cut and “no-one knows how they are going to do that”. The question he asks is: are they simply going to cut costs, abandoning ideas of transformation “because they can’t afford to do anything”, or will they be able to reduce budgets “plus transform the way they deliver, delivering more”.

Because this is a shared problem across Europe – Brugidou terms it “a globalisation effect in public services” – and because different countries have best practice examples they can share with other nations, Accenture has joined think-tank the Lisbon Council and higher education provider the College of Europe to establish the Government of the Future Centre.

Launched in December, the centre aims to “provide thought leadership to EU institutions and national, regional and local governments on key areas of public sector reform”, according to a joint statement from its backers. Brugidou explains that there are three main areas of activity: building up a network of “the 100 or 200 people throughout Europe who are the change agents of state reform”; bringing them together in workshops and at a summit to be held in Brussels in June; and involving students from the College of Europe in public service reform programmes in a variety of countries (see box).

Brugidou says the college’s involvement follows a project Accenture ran in France, in which students were coached by consultants. “We saw that students can bring a lot of fresh and simple ideas about state reform,” he says. Brugidou dismisses the notion that you need to be an expert in transformation or have worked in a department for 15 years before you can suggest reforms – an idea that, he says, is prevalent in countries such as France, but less so in the UK, where “there has been a revolution, especially in management style”. Even so, his idea that “these students, in a few months, come in and bring very good, very simple, basic ideas that somebody can implement” may not sound too appetising to those men and women with 15 years’ experience.

The students will be supported by consultants, and this model of parachuting in young, bright things has the potential to produce all the same resentments that can be prompted by the arrival of consultants. Brugidou recognises that “there has always been, and there is still, a sometimes complex relationship” between consultants and permanent staff. Nevertheless, this consultant believes that he and his colleagues can be “a very powerful means for government to do things”, as long as the relationship is balanced. The pilots run by the Government for the Future Centre will not produce reports recommending that consultants are the answer, he says; there is no way they can tell 23-year-old, independently-minded students what to write, and “the College of Europe has a strong ethic towards [its interactions with] private companies; I don’t think they would let that happen.”

The pilots are central to ensuring that the centre has concrete examples of how reform can make services better and cheaper. Similarly, the network that the centre aims to establish will be made up, “not of the thinkers, not the talkers or the writers, but the guys who drive the reform”, says Brugidou; the centre’s events will not be empty talking shops. “We don’t want to talk about innovation and transformation,” he explains. “Each time there is a meeting on the future of the EU, you have 200 people in a room, nobody knows what they are doing, but they are discussing ‘transformation’. We want to be very concrete.” This, Brugidou adds, plays to Accenture’s strengths: practice, not theories. “We’re not credible in the political area,” he admits; the company’s expertise lies in the execution of transformation.

The centre has also, quite deliberately, been established at arm’s-length from European Union bodies such as the Commission. Brugidou says planning-stage discussions with officials around Europe suggested that this was preferable: the Commission does not have a remit to push best practice between its member states; and officials in those states were keen to make contact with their counterparts and Commission officials themselves, rather than “being directed by any sort of central entity”.

Whether the centre – or, indeed, any “thought leadership” organisation – can avoid becoming a talking shop is open to debate; though the fact that it is aware of the danger means it can at least guard against the tendency. The idea of a centre specifically designed for the doers, not the thinkers, is of great interest. On top of all that, Brugidou promises that it will provide an opportunity for the “change agents” in member states – faced with an ever-growing European state, squeezing their room for manoeuvre – to take the initiative on a European level as well as at home.

“It is not an EU institution; people don’t want to be talked at. It is time for people to take the lead, not be crushed by an expanding Europe,” he says. It’s an interesting proposition; keep an eye open for your invite.

Concrete examples: the four pilots
The Government of the Future Centre’s Brugidou says its initial focus will be on four areas where “reform of the public sector is critical to improve the social and economic conditions of citizens in Europe”. These are: better healthcare; increasing employment; connecting citizens and governments; and more environmentally-sustainable public sector bodies.

The four pilot projects on which students from the College of Europe will be working are:

Hospital of Barcelona: increasing the use of technology in disease management in order to allow, for example, people to be treated at home rather than in hospital

Dublin City Council: developing the Irish capital’s sustainability agenda, at a time of large-scale funding cuts

Nationale Pour l’Emploi, France: improving the French unemployment agency’s relationships with domestic and European-wide employers so that it becomes the first choice for firms wishing to advertise vacancies

Altine, Norway: examining whether the comprehensive website for businesses developed by Norway’s government can be copied and used in other European nations