“I announce the creation of a special fund entirely dedicated to state reform, financed by realizing part of its assets, in particular real estate, which belong to the public power.†In January 2025, the former Prime Minister, François Bayrou, put the rationalization of the organization of the state on the menu of his general policy speech. Through a new investment fund, the objective was to develop structuring projects, which would lead in fine To an optimization of State services, in particular through the development of artificial intelligence in administrations.
The announcement was followed up: Olivier Bouet, at the time head of the transformation of public action in the Prime Minister’s office, was officially responsible for foreshadowing this famous investment fund dedicated to state reform and development. of AI in public administrations. The choice of a public-private profile. Olivier Bouet had indeed made his return to the ministerial office in 2024, first by joining the office of Michel Barnier in Matignon, then of François Bayrou in 2025, after 6 years at EY Consulting. He had already worked, 14 years earlier, as a technical advisor of Éric Woerth at the Ministry of the Budget in 2010, then as project manager at the general direction for the modernization of the State.
His lease at Matignon ended at the end of 2025: he left Matignon to return to the private sector, as director of the development of AI and Cloud offers for governments and defense within the Thales company. But then, what happened to the fund project he was in charge of? According to information from‘Public actorsstate reform as it was conceived by François Bayrou is no longer relevant. At least, in form: the objective of rationalizing public action corresponds to the vision of the Lecornu government, which launched the “effective state” mission last September. But the method is no longer the same.
Pooling, performance plans…
However, everything was ready before Olivier Bouet’s departure from Matignon. The objective that had been set for him: to release the public action overhaul program in the summer. The project was far from being cosmetic, as it involved launching a large transformation program, in order to re-examine the relevance of the intervention of public power in the broad sense.
The fund was intended to support different types of projects. The first related to the transformation and simplification of public policies. For example, projects like the single social allowance or the dematerialization of electoral propaganda were on the shelf. The second family of files revolved around reorganization and efficiency, notably through performance plans for support functions. Finally, the third and final category aimed to promote interministerial pooling, for example by developing shared computing or purchases of graphics processors, with the idea of launching investments that would serve the various state services.
A turnkey project
Disruptive technology projects, notably mobilizing artificial intelligence, would have been given priority in the allocation of funding. Each ministry was thus ordered to build a sort of roadmap for restructuring, based on digital solutions. Under the terms of bilateral meetings which had been organized between March and June with all the cabinet directors, general secretariats of the ministries and in the presence of Matignon’s cabinet director, the preliminary project was almost ready.
Because Matignon had to play a central role in his management, to the extent that he was expected to monitor the execution of the budgets. Unlike the fund for the transformation of public action (FTAP) launched in 2017, the envelopes would not have been in the hands of the ministries, even if the projects concerned them, but in those of the Prime Minister’s services. As a reminder, the FTAP, which is coming to an end, operated according to a window logic. The Court of Auditors notably concluded, in a report published last November, that this way of allocating funding had led to certain ministries having little, if at all, benefited from the fund.
Relying on governance made up of Matignon, the budget department and the interministerial direction for public transformation (DITP), the ambition was then to launch this global transformation plan, integrating an important digital component, during a meeting such as an interministerial committee for public transformation (CITP). According to the private fund model, investment directors could have been appointed to support the execution of the projects, relying on the advice of the DITP, always with the return on investment in mind.
Change of government, change of priorities
But in the meantime, François Bayrou finally favored a budgetary reframing first, announcing a multi-year plan to rebalance the public accounts in mid-July. The schedule then called for the launch of the transformation plan around the end of summer. Before the Prime Minister lost the vote of confidence in the National Assembly, and left the government.
Since the Lecornu government, the ambition of a major transformation plan is no longer up to date. Result: no major plan for transforming public action was on the PLF program for 2026. No budgetary line had been planned to launch the investment fund: without political impetus and especially without a major plan to finance, the merits of a dedicated fund disappear. Because to invest, you still need to have projects in which to invest…
For the moment, the Lecornu government is content to bring to life the latest projects supported by the FTAP, but does not plan any new major investments in this area.
