Once the minister concerned had appointed each director, they could draw up a contract of objectives and means whose results could be tracked to ensure accountability. This approach is widely practised in Sweden and elsewhere, and requires no legal changes. Why not start experimenting it straight away? By way of examples, the Attali report cited the tax and accounting administration, INSEE, civil protection and the prison service. Support for managers These increased levels of responsibility and autonomy must be accompanied by a change in managerial culture to one that is more open and participative with a cross-cutting focus. When it comes to change management, we never spend enough time listening to and informing the men and women working in the public service, nor do we devote enough resources to supporting them dayto-day. Social dialogue, when it manages to get beyond posturing, can provide one of the levers for change. This support is particularly important for "middle"  Page 18 of 19 or local managers: they are the link between senior management and public service workers, and recognition and empowerment are crucial. For example, every year we bring the top 600 managers at the Banque de France together to discuss the progress of our strategic plan. We have given them more leeway when evaluating their teams or organising teleworking, backed up by feedback as often as possible. Simplification Lastly, simplification is an essential vector for transforming public services – expected by everyone but all too often neglected.
Measures which set an upper limit for individual household indebtedness can therefore be effective in terms of reducing the risk of weak macroeconomic growth, even though the effects of the total debt-to-income ratio would be limited. The Riksbank’s previous analysis has also shown that a debt-to-income limit (that is to say a limit for how large debt can be in relation to disposable income) could be an effective complement to the current loan-to-value limit. 16 This is due to the fact that incomes grow in a more stable way than housing prices. Whenever housing prices increase sharply, there is a risk that debts will continue to increase in relation to incomes if the only limitation is a loan-tovalue limit. A debt-to-income limit is also more effective in terms of preventing interest payments taking up too large a share of incomes in the future. So those are the measures we could take. But what would happen to household indebtedness if no further measures were taken? A few different scenarios for household indebtedness Normally, the Riksbank creates forecasts regarding household indebtedness three years ahead. Making an assessment any further ahead than this would involve considerable  16  See the article “Debt-to-income limit as a policy measure” in the Financial Stability Report 2015:1, and Alfelt, G., Lagerwall, B. and Ölcer, D. (2015) “An analysis of the debt ratio ceiling as a policy measure”, Economic Commentary no. 8, 2015. Sveriges Riksbank. BIS central bankers’ speeches  13  uncertainty.