Soon after my appointment in June 2020, I wanted this JF 2025 project to increase the impact, of financial jurisdictions (FJ) on citizens’ lives as well as their attractiveness and strength, quite simply for the next generations that will make the financial jurisdictions of tomorrow. It aims to help to define our priorities for the next five years and to ensure that our jurisdictions become even more open, agile, and therefore even more useful for the transformation of a renewed public service. Transparency and participation were key drivers for this project. FJ staff have been a lot - over 1,200 out of the 1,500 - to respond to the questionnaire sent in July 2020 to share their feelings and ideas for improving our work and strengthening our impact.

Starting in September, the "JF 2025" project was based on a steering committee, an advisory group of senior colleagues and former colleagues, 8 working groups, 72 participants and 6 exchange sessions with the presidents of the 6 chambers of the Court and the 17 Regional and Territorial Chambers (CRTC). We published 11 newsletters, 16 position papers and 7 oral restitution workshops. All this work was carried out in parallel with other current work in the Court or the CRTCs, and it represented a significant drafting and coordination effort. This work of diagnosis and reflection would not have been complete if we had only carried it out internally. This is why I wanted it to include our working environment. Nearly 2,500 auditees were thus consulted by means of questionnaires, and more than 200 of them were interviewed by the workshops: members of Parliament, local elected representatives, association (CSOs) leaders, public decision-makers and journalists.

Finally, a peer review was carried out between September and December by our UK counterpart, the National Audit Office, whom I am deeply grateful to. With their external view coming from a different SAI model, our colleagues performed their tasks in a quick but smart manner, although only remotely. Their final conclusions are remarkably enlightening and many of their proposals have fed our final strategic orientations.

Our strategic document is now adopted and I personally assume its responsibility. I presented it to the the press in February and gave it to the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister. It will serve as a roadmap and is intended to be followed, in a second phase, by an implementation phase, which will deal with fundamental aspects related to resources.

Three strategic orientations have emerged for the FJ. They are themselves broken down into 40 key actions for the months and years to come, and they aim to continue an evolution undertaken since several years. The first orientation is to be more « citizens oriented », thanks to more diversified, accessible and faster work. We currently enjoy a high level of public support. More than 70% of French citizens trust the FJ. This is remarkable. Our success again last year, in the midst of the health crisis, during the European Heritage Days, also bears witness to this, as does the increase in visits to our website (+ 24%), or of our social networks (+21%). We also continue to receive as many letters from citizens, reacting to our work, suggesting others and wanting to get to know us better. But this credit should never be taken for granted, and we must constantly prove ourselves worthy of it. We can go further and strengthen our links with citizens by reforming some of our procedures with a number of actions, such as:

1° to experiment, via an online platform, with a citizens' right of suggestion of topics for our audit planning. We must listen to them in order to investigate;

2° to increase the proportion of published works for the Court. Only about 60% of the whole Court's work is currently available online, whereas publication is a systematic rule for the CRTCs. Except when the law prohibits their disclosure, our reports are written to be widely read. The current crisis context requires to increase the audience for our messages, and in more interactive forms;

3° to introduce new audit methods that are quicker and more useful to citizens, by resolutely shortening our deadlines - in compliance, of course, with our crucial principles of collegiality and contradiction - and by developing so-called "flash" audits, which timely analyses financial data and the costs of a public measure or action.

The second orientation presented in the document for 2025 relates to our various missions, which need to be carried out in a more powerful and modern way.

- our jurisdictional function: we are, we must remain and we will remain jurisdictions, as other courts in the country. However, the current situation should improve and move towards a simpler, more readable accountability regime that is better suited to the management challenges of the 21st century and towards a unified judge of all kinds of public managers, which should preferably be the Court and the CRTC. This reform will be fundamental;

- our role of auditing the accounts and management. We can increase the targeting of our audits thanks to the risk-based approach, but also highlight the good practices we have identified in our audits - in short, less stigmatising, more encouraging. Let us avoid feeding the media-loving jingle of "the Court that curries" or " that pins", while of course not neglecting the irregularities, mismanagement and reprehensible behaviour that must be reported. Let us be more "the Court that analyses", " that evaluates", " that proposes". Our work should also better integrate the European and international dimension. We are very strong in this area, we can be even stronger;

- our contribution to the evaluation of public policies, finally. I would like us to become the reference institution in France in this area, as the Constitution invites us to do. I also hope that this possibility of evaluation will be extended to CRTCs and that the regional executives can request annual surveys of regional interest to be carried out.

In all our missions, whatever form our work takes, we must pay ever-greater attention to the impact we have on public transformation. This must be our guide: let us not aim for the spectacular, let us aim for the useful, and let us look for where we can make a difference.

The third and final strategic orientation is to make FJ more agile and integrated. The Court and the regional and territorial chambers are now part of the same whole and they need a better functional unity. They are two sides of the same coin, one dedicated to the State and the other to the territories. This double face matches our public policies that are shared between the State and the local communities, combining national and territorial dimensions.

This duality in unity is an incomparable asset for us. In our public institutions, who else but us has such a broad perspective to audit, evaluate and advise? Who else is lucky enough to combine independence and proximity to decision-makers at all levels of public action? Our country will need these assets more than ever in the coming years to better transform itself. As a result, our audit planning will therefore benefit from better coordination and harmonised skills, while our governance and forecast committees will work closer together. With these 3 ambitions and their short- and long-term proposals, we have a lot of work to do up to 2025.

To know more, look at the document itself either in French or in English.