Interview with Claude Bigot

What specific know-how can EN3S’s contribute in the area of cooperation?

Clearly, as a university, our main area of know-how is training. And more specifically training for students from French-speaking countries in the form of a six-month course comprising three months’ theoretical training and three-months’ practical experience in French social security organisations. The course has drawn students from North and sub-Saharan Africa, Lebanon, South America, central and eastern Europe, Russia and China – over 200 students since it was first introduced. Like their French colleagues, our foreign students are all destined for senior managerial positions in social security organisations. EN3S is widely renowned for its know-how in this area. China, for example, has been sending us trainees for over a decade now.

In addition to its own international intake, the school also works in partnership with the Ivorian Centre for Advanced Studies in Social Security (Centre ivoirien de formation des cadres de sécurité sociale), an institution open to all French-speaking African countries, whose programme ends with five months’ training in France.

With other countries – and notably Algeria, Colombia, Lithuania, Morocco and Quebec - we operate under bilateral agreements aimed at expanding training in the area of social protection and fostering exchanges between our respective systems. Such agreements provide the framework for student and teacher exchanges and placements for foreign students for example.

Other cooperation activities include the hosting of foreign delegations who come to us to learn more about our know-how, and training audits for foreign institutions and governments.

Can you give some examples of your cooperation activities?

With Poland for example, we have just finished setting up a training centre for social security staff. In Algeria we are partnered with a training institute for high-level social-security professionals, including practitioner-advisers, directors and financial executives.

Other current initiatives include our talks with the Inter-African Conference on Social Security, with a view to setting up a training centre for the 15 French-speaking African countries, structured around existing institutions.

We have also worked with China over the last decade, our cooperation efforts culminating this summer in the creation of a national training centre for social security executives.

We also have close ties with our counterparts in western Europe. Our programme includes a four-week international course, and international meetings in Saint-Etienne attended by institutions that have provided placements for our own students.

In terms of our future development, we our currently working on a major project to extend our six-month programme for French-speaking students to Spanish speakers, and in the longer term to English-speaking students.

What are your expectations of GIP SPSI?

In my view, the main role of the GIP is to organise the response of the relevant French organisations to requests for cooperation in the area of health and social protection. Today, many of our foreign partners are unsure where to address their requests and that causes delays and reflects badly on the French offering. I therefore feel that GIP SPSI has a part to play in coordinating the different players and in clarifying their respective roles. It also has an important contribution to make in the pooling of information.