Managing civil servants

In 2001, following recent elections, a new team of town councillors arrived in the Paris town hall. Yves Contassot, a Green Party representative, became an assistant to the mayor and was in charge of the environment, cleanliness, open spaces and waste processing. Thereby, he took over a small army of eleven thousand civil servants, despite the fact that the Green Party is not known for having a great deal of management experience … Nevertheless, Yves Contassot drew on two separate experiences which would prove crucial for his new job. Firstly, he had worked for the Banque de France since he was nineteen, and where he was rapidly promoted to executive status managing a number of IT, financial and marketing projects. Secondly, from 1978 to 1982 he was a permanent member of the CFDT, a French trade union, and as a result, he knew how to anticipate and solve social conflicts. Gradually, he put in place efficient management techniques to optimise public administration, an aim that he considers fundamental for a Green Party representative.