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THE ELECTRONIC SINGLE
WINDOW FOR BUSINESS
FORMALITIES: A PROJECT
REQUIRING FURTHER
CONSOLIDATION
Flash Audit
December 2023
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Executive Summary
A reform designed to simplify formalities for businesses
Since 1981, seven Business Formalities Centres (Centres de Formalités des
Entreprises, CFE) networks have enabled businesses to complete the formalities involved in
setting up, changing their situation and finally ceasing trading. These centres forwarded the
files received to the bodies responsible for validating the information, entering it in registers
and applying all the relevant tax, social security and legal provisions (tax services, social
security bodies, INSEE, labour inspectorate, commercial court registries for entry in the various
registers, chambers of trade and craft, chambers of agriculture and the national chamber for
inland waterway transport).
The existence of these seven networks was a source of complexity and difficulties for
both businesses and administrations.
With the aim of simplifying and modernising the system, the law on business growth and
transformation (known as the PACTE law
1
) of 22 May 2019 decided to replace them with a
single window, collecting all the information and documents required for registration formalities
and acting as the interface between the companies filing and the organisations receiving the
information, regardless of the company’s activity, location or legal form. The unification of t
hese
formalities was to be accompanied by the complete dematerialisation of the process. At the
same time, the same law created a national register of companies (RNE), intended to become
the sole register with which entities carrying on an economic activity on French territory must
register, replacing the various pre-existing registers. The RNE is responsible for collecting,
storing and disseminating information about companies.
The creation of an electronic single window for business formalities and a national
register of companies by the PACTE law represents a complex reform, with a major technical
dimension and a systemic dimension due to the upheavals it introduces into the operation,
organisation, IT systems and professional practices of users, the entities previously
responsible for the CFEs and the bodies receiving the information collected by the CFEs.
These upheavals go far beyond this, since they affect the very remit of all the participants and
therefore their institutional positioning. By entrusting this activity to a public body under its
supervision, the State is taking control of the management of these formalities. From the
outset, the reform met with strong resistance from some of the players involved.
The law set a deadline of 1 January 2023 for both the single window and the national
business register to become operational. Major shortcomings became apparent from the start
of 2023. Against this backdrop, the Court decided to carry out a flash audit in the summer of
2023 to establish precisely the conditions under which this project was implemented, identify
the causes of the difficulties encountered and assess the extent to which the adjustments
decided on during the course of 2023 will make it possible to resolve the problems observed
at the start-up of the single window.
1
PACTE: plan d’action pour la croissance et la transformation des entreprises (actio
n plan for business growth and
transformation).
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Difficulties in implementing the project
The reform schedule and key dates since the PACTE law was passed in May 2019 are
as follows.
Diagram 1: chronology of the single window for business formalities (GUFE) project
Source: Court of Accounts
An ad hoc interministerial task force, reporting to the minister for justice and the ministers
for the economy and the budget, was set up in July 2019 to provide strategic guidance for the
project. In addition, in July 2020, the National Industrial Property Institute (INPI) was
designated as the operator of the single window and responsible for keeping the national
register of companies. The operator performed its task by using external service providers and
relying on its own teams, whose numbers were increased, albeit less than requested by the
supervisory authorities. The overall cost of around €15 million was financed entirely from INPI’s
own funds.
The early launch on 1 January 2022 of the module enabling only business start-up
formalities to be carried out via the single window should have enabled the proper functioning
of this module to be verified. However, as the CFEs continued to register these formalities,
many users continued to contact them. As a result, due to insufficient use of the single window,
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it was not possible to test its ability to manage the large flow of start-up formalities before
1 January 2023, the date scheduled for the closure of the CFEs.
In addition, the other functionalities (modifications and closures) could not be opened in
the single window on 1 January 2023, given the inadequacy of the tests, which were only able
to start in autumn 2022. A back-up procedure was therefore activated, enabling these
formalities to be carried out outside the single window, as the CFEs had, in accordance with
the law, ceased their registration activities on the same date.
On 1 January 2023, when the “company creation” function was rolled out to the single
window (with the concomitant closure of the other channels) and the back-up procedure for
company modification and closure formalities was implemented, there were a number of major
problems: technical complications in completing the formalities, the portal’s functional
specifications were not adapted to the situation, it was impossible to validate the formalities,
the formalities were not transmitted or were even rejected by the recipients, etc. This situation
has had a major impact on businesses, especially as the user support system has proved
inadequate.
In summer 2023, six months after the opening of the single window, the situation had not
stabilised: start-up formalities were working well on the single window; modification and closure
formalities had been opened but were still seldom used; the back-up procedure had been
extended initially until 30 June 2023 and then, in a second phase, until 31 December 2023.
This audit has identified the two main reasons for the difficulties encountered by this
project: on the one hand, an initial deadline that was unrealistic given the scale of the project
and, on the other, governance and management that were ill-suited to the project.
An unrealistic initial deadline given the scale of the project
The PACTE law was not preceded by a sufficiently in-depth analysis of the nature and
conditions of the reform. As a result of the inadequacies of the impact study, the decisions
ultimately taken to set up this single window were far removed from the solution initially
envisaged. In technical terms, it was ultimately decided to develop a completely new IT system.
From a functional point of view, the essential connection with the National Business Register
(RNE) had not been taken into account.
Under these conditions, the objective of opening a single window for businesses on
1 January 2023 already seemed unrealistic as early as 2020.
Added to this extremely tight schedule were the disruptions caused by the regulatory
work to redefine the procedures, carried out at the same time as the development of the single
window and the RNE. Some decisions on the regulatory texts were made while the two projects
were under development, forcing changes that contributed to increasing the pressure on
deadlines.
Given this context, the closer the deadline approached, the more difficulties accumulated
in the project, leading to difficult decisions at the end of 2022, but also in 2023, on the
emergency procedures to be activated and the new deadlines. Nevertheless, ministerial
decision-making consistently favoured adherence to the initial schedule.
Governance and management not suited to the project
The difficulties encountered also stem from the project’s governance and management
arrangements, which fall far short of the accepted standards in this area.
An inter-ministerial task force was set up by decree on 3 July 2019 to oversee the project.
Comprising three people, it was placed under the authority of the minister of justice and the
ministers responsible for the economy and the budget, and reported to the director general of
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companies for its administrative and financial management alone. Its remit is fairly general. In
particular, it is responsible for the strategic management of the project, specifying its content,
detailed objectives, schedule and the resources required for its implementation, and for
ensuring that it runs smoothly. A steering committee, provided for in the same decree and
chaired by the head of the inter-ministerial mission, also met at least four times a year.
INPI was responsible for project management, but there was no document specifying
how the operational project management was to be organised. This shortcoming lies at the
root of the difficulties encountered: a project director should have been appointed to lead
working groups bringing together representatives of the various partners and users, to define
the requirements and functionalities, to provide guidance to INPI and to make technical
decisions when necessary. The fact that partners and users were not involved in the
development of this project also explains why some of them were slow to fully grasp the extent
of the reform. It was not until the summer of 2023, far too late, that this initial lack of a collective
operational structure began to be corrected by involving all the players.
No guarantee that difficulties will be resolved quickly
As of autumn 2023, the overall status of the single window project is improving. The
governance and management of the project are being adjusted, and the extension of the back-
up period should enable progress to be made. However, there remain many shortcomings to
be addressed, even though the volume of formalities carried out via the single window is still
insufficient to detect and correct all of them.
A number of actions decided on by the DGE in conjunction with the other players are
taking place belatedly and do not appear likely to resolve all the difficulties by the end of the
year.
It is therefore not possible to rule out the possibility that the deadline of 1 January 2024
for using the single window to complete formalities will be marked by major malfunctions.
Serious anomalies may only be detected by companies in 2024 or even later, when they wish
to carry out a new procedure, or when they are confronted with unfounded requests from the
tax or social security authorities.
The consequences of an inadequately prepared and poorly managed reform could
therefore continue to be felt for several years, without having provided businesses with the
expected simplification.
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The main findings of the audit
An examination of the implementation of the single window and the national register of
companies shows that two conditions necessary for the success of a complex digital
transformation project were not implemented:
-
the single window project should have been the subject of a much more in-depth
impact study in the draft PACTE law. These shortcomings led to a review of the
project, whose implementation turned out to be more complex than expected, making
it impossible to keep to the initial schedule;
-
the implementation of the single window has suffered from an inappropriate
organisation of the management and governance, which did not involve the
stakeholders until the summer of 2023. The project has suffered major delays due to
the absence of a project director in charge of operational project management and
able to impose decisions on the various stakeholders.
Finally, the refusal to reconsider the implementation date set out in the law, despite the
numerous difficulties identified, was an undoubtedly unreasonable risk, the serious
consequences of which were borne by the companies and government departments.