Interview de Catherine Rigoulot Directrice de l’appui au pilotage, de la qualité et de l’audit

How and with whom has this new COP  been developed?

It is the result of a sustained effort with all our supervisory ministries since the summer of 2022. Four thematic working groups were set up to take stock of the previous COP, considered satisfactory overall, and to define our future strategic goals. ANSES then drafted the document and defined the indicators and milestones for measuring progress in achieving these goals. A completed draft COP was presented to our Social Committee and Scientific Board, and then to our Board of Administrators in March 2023. It was a real challenge to develop the new COP against such a tight deadline! But we achieved it thanks to major efforts with our supervisory bodies, and rigorous organisation.

What were  the challenges?

We faced major challenges of several types. In terms of form, we needed to respond to the shared desire of ANSES and its supervisory bodies to keep the COP tightly focused on genuinely strategic issues. Regarding content, it was very important for the Agency to build this COP on the previous one in order to consolidate the changes already made, strengthen its health risk assessment missions and give them more perspective. And of course, we had to take account of new challenges, in a national and global context marked by health crises and transformations in society and the environment – climate change and biodiversity loss to name just two.

The final document lives up to our expectations: ANSES now has a strategic, well-balanced and decisive COP. It does not cover all our activities in detail – that is not its purpose – but it does highlight our missions to safeguard public health, the “One Health” dimension of all our scientific activities and our place at European and international level, and outlines our prospects for meeting the challenges of the future. A large part of the COP is also devoted to the transparency of our actions, our high ethical standards and our internal procedures, which aim to ensure efficiency.

What’s next?

Now it’s a matter of assimilating this new framework and using it as our backbone for the next five years. All the goals, indicators and milestones are currently being integrated into our various internal organisational and operational processes, particularly in our quality and risk management system. The COP is also reflected in the activities of our teams, who are already hard at work to achieve the goals set for 2023. As with its development, its implementation will be closely managed and monitored internally, to enable the Agency to meet the numerous deadlines and report on attainment of the different goals. This will be an opportunity for us to highlight the achievements and changes made in fulfilling our public service missions