A senior government official, Sébastien Soriano put his training as an engineer at the École Polytechnique to use for the digital transformation of the State. His appointment to the head of the “policing of telecoms,” ARCEP (an independent French agency in charge of regulating telecommunications in France), has made him a confirmed proponent of regulation, and of the role of the public sector in the face of the giants of Tech.
To respond to the great challenges of our time (the environment, globalized finance, technological acceleration, new inequalities…), is the State definitively out of the picture? Between reassurance regarding the merits of our social model and a diffuse fear concerning its abilities to recover, the health crisis has brought back to the forefront of French people’s concerns the question of the future of their public services.
Sébastien Soriano delivers a powerful appeal to reconnect with “the radical nature of the public project,” beyond the persistent malaise that has taken hold of agents of the State. However, many of them are reinventing, as closely as possible to their hands-on experiences, a new way of “producing the common good” – one of the assets of this book is that it provides an unexpected and stimulating panorama of these developments.
To rediscover the path to an alliance between the State and society, the State must abandon its domineering posture and become more receptive. Not a “greater” or “lesser” State, but an “augmented” State through the networking of its human resources.