One in five French public employees holds a job exposed to AI, says the state's HR directorate

Sorting documents, extracting data, searching for information, spotting fraud: according to the French Directorate General for Administration and the Civil Service (DGAFP), these are the first uses of artificial intelligence in public services. They save time and improve quality. But, it warns, no immediate budget savings have yet been demonstrated.

This finding appears in the summary of the "strategic review of the civil service 2035-2050," published on October 19 by the DGAFP, the French state's HR department. According to Journal du Net, the document is meant to inform the choices of France's next president. AI takes up only a few pages, but they contain one figure: nearly 20% of public employees, or 1.1 million people, hold jobs that are "significantly affected."

Who is exposed, and where does the figure come from?

The estimate does not come from the DGAFP itself. It draws on a 2026 report by the general inspectorates of finance, social affairs and public administration (IGF, IGAS and IGA) on deploying AI in government departments. That report applies the job exposure framework established by the International Labour Organization (ILO) to public employees. The result: about half of employees would be very slightly exposed. The most affected jobs are mainly in administrative and support functions. Part of the workforce, including military personnel, who are absent from the ILO framework, was not assessed.

The DGAFP does not mention job cuts. According to the most recent studies, it writes, AI would "transform tasks more than jobs as a whole." The time freed up could be redeployed toward "expertise, oversight and relations with users," provided that training, internal mobility and career changes are organized. Recruitment should evolve too, for example to favor "critical thinking over the ability to synthesize."

When AI is involved in individual decisions, the DGAFP sets conditions: human oversight, transparency and safeguards against discrimination.

The service counter won't disappear

The document notes that 82% of administrative procedures are now done online, but that 44% of French people still say they have trouble completing them, according to a 2025 Senate report. Human support, in person or by phone, therefore remains "essential," especially for vulnerable groups and complex situations. Digital tools should first allow employees to spend more time on each case.

The state is too dependent on its IT contractors

Another message, more unexpected in a text about human resources: the state depends too much on its contractors. For each digital project, the interministerial digital directorate (Dinum) recommends that at least 37% of jobs be in-house. According to a 2020 study by the Cour des comptes (France's national audit office) cited in the report, the average would be 65%, across all countries and sectors. For the DGAFP, this dependence leads to extra costs, a loss of technical memory and weaker strategic control. Rebuilding lasting digital career tracks is, in its view, a matter of sovereignty.

It cites the example of Spain. The country devoted €2.6 billion to a plan to digitize its administrations over 2021-2025. For 2026, it plans 1,700 positions in its digital civil service corps, 42% more than in the previous round, with specialties in AI, cybersecurity and data science for the first time.

These ideas fit into a broader diagnosis: 5.85 million employees, 38% of them over 50, and civil service exams that attract fewer candidates. According to Journal du Net, the DGAFP's director general, Boris Melmoux-Eude, believes the civil service is "in a situation of emergency." The private sector faces the same questions: even AI companies are hiring fewer entry-level workers, as Anthropic acknowledges. It remains to be seen whether the next government will fund the training the report deems necessary.