Measure 1.14: Public-sector pay transparency

Transparency already exists in limited form

French law already requires certain public employers to publish annually the aggregate of their ten highest remuneration payments with a gender breakdown. This provides a transparency baseline but is not equivalent to a comprehensive named database of all public-sector pay. ^[1]

Costing status. The Plan does not attach a certified annual saving here. Any return must be observed after implementation.

Make pay visible without unnecessarily exposing people

A more detailed platform must respect data minimisation, accuracy, security and proportionality. Transparency can be granular on posts, grades, employers and pay components without unnecessarily publishing every employee’s identity. Publication thresholds must be justified by public interest. ^[2]

Public-pay transparency: from payroll data to useful disclosure

Define the data and public purpose
Aggregate by function and band
Apply minimisation and re-identification controls
Publish a reusable versioned dataset

Build the platform from payroll systems

A robust model publishes pay scales, allowance components, senior posts above defined thresholds, the ten-highest-pay aggregates required by current law and statistical distributions by employer. An open API would enable analysis of disparities, while a correction mechanism handles errors. ^[1]^[2]

Cost comes before savings

This measure has no certifiable direct saving at launch: it initially creates costs for collection, standardisation, quality control, security and publication. Its return is indirect through anomaly detection, comparison of allowance policies and pressure for justification. Gains should be measured ex post, case by case. ^[3]

Recurring net saving = genuinely removed costs − recreated costs − transferred charges − recurring residual cost Year-one transition cost is published separately.

Data protection and right to correction

Poorly calibrated transparency can expose individuals, facilitate harassment or spread inaccurate data. Conversely, aggregates that are too broad make the tool useless. The right balance combines thresholds, pseudonymisation or post-level publication, data controls and a rapid right to correction. ^[2]

What must be demonstrated before retaining the structural effect target

Useful pay transparency does not require an unnecessary public name-by-name register

The purpose of public-pay transparency should be to explain the structure of expenditure, compare public employers and identify unusual disparities. The General Civil Service Code already contains disclosure obligations in defined circumstances. ^[1] The reform should build on that base rather than create a parallel database: a common data dictionary covering pay components, headcount by band, employer cost and exception rules. Granularity should be sufficient for auditing without default publication of every employee’s identity.

CNIL guidance on open data requires necessity, proportionality and protection of personal information. ^[2] A robust platform can publish distributions by pay band, decile, function or organisation and reserve individual identification for cases where the law requires it or where a clear public-interest justification exists. It should also document pseudonymisation, retention and re-identification risk for very small groups. Transparency is credible only when it can lawfully remain online and be reused over time.

This measure also supplies the evidence base for measures 1.15 and 1.20. The same aggregated data can show how many compensation packages exceed the six-SMIC threshold, which allowances explain gaps and how bonus structures evolve. The data dictionary should therefore be designed once and versioned. Success is measured by reproducible calculations — payroll mass, distribution, components, trends and exceptions — rather than the number of names published. DGAFP reporting provides a statistical reference for defining populations and comparing them. ^[3]

A transparency platform should produce comparisons, not just lists

The usefulness of a public-pay platform depends first on a common data dictionary. If every public employer publishes different categories, readers cannot compare roles or understand outliers. The system should therefore define compensation components, employer cost, working-time reference, valued benefits and exceptional payments, then publish aggregates by function, organisation, decile or pay band. That makes it possible to analyse dispersion, the weight of bonuses and year-to-year change without turning budget transparency into unnecessary exposure of named individuals.

Data quality must itself be auditable. Each dataset should carry an extraction date, scope, variable definitions and coverage rate, while corrected series retain version history so earlier analyses can be reproduced. Small populations need disclosure controls to reduce re-identification risk, and exceptions should be documented rather than left to each body’s discretion. The same infrastructure can then support the six-minimum-wage cap and the review of senior-civil-service bonuses, avoiding multiple overlapping databases with incompatible definitions.

Publish public pay without building a misleading database

A transparency platform first needs a common data dictionary. Base salary, statutory pay, bonuses, benefits in kind, office allowances, expense reimbursements and exceptional payments cannot be mixed in one unexplained figure. The project should define every field, reference period, paying body, treatment of part-time work and update date. Without standardisation, two amounts that look comparable may represent different things and generate misleading rankings.

Data protection requires an equally deliberate level of granularity. Detail should be proportionate to public responsibility and to the accountability purpose. Individual publication may be justified for some senior roles; salary bands or aggregates may be more appropriate elsewhere. The platform must also support correction, audit trails and version history so an error does not remain permanently indexed. A reader should be able to understand what each figure includes, when it was updated and whether it represents an official amount, an estimate or an exceptional payment.

Common audit method: double-counting controls, transition costs and budget reconciliation are centralised in the versioned budget-methodology register. For measure 1.14, those rules apply only to the flows and risks documented on this page; no saving is booked without executed baseline spending, an identifiable base and transferred costs deducted.

Conclusion for measure 1.14. The historical target of structural effect remains an objective to audit. The reform should be credited only with the net saving actually observed after transition, transferred expenditure and any recreated costs. The policy choice may be made before every amount is known; the site itself must never present an assumption as executed expenditure.

Open the technical appendix: evidence required before validating the costing

Technical appendix — minimum control grid for measure 1.14
Stage	Expected evidence	Timing	Treatment
Zero baseline	Executed expenditure, headcount, contracts, allowances, property and directly related resources	Before legislation	Publish
Avoidable cost base	Lines that genuinely cease, with date and legal basis	Impact assessment	Justify
Transition	Mobility, compensation, redistricting, IT, contracts and transfers	Year 1	Separate from recurring
Transferred costs	Expenditure taken over by another administration or tier	Years 1–2	Deduct
Net result	Recurring saving on a like-for-like basis with confidence level	After 12 stable months	Audit

Notes and sources

← Back to the legal corpus of 155 measures