Meeting a ... Director of General Administration in a community of agglomerations
Let me introduce myself, Céline, I am Director of General Administration in a community of agglomerations. According to the law of 12 July 1999, an agglomeration community is an EPCI – a public establishment for inter-municipal cooperation – with its own tax system. There are several types of EPCI: communities of communes, communities of agglomerations – which have 50,000 inhabitants or more, urban communities – from 450,000 inhabitants, metropolises and SANs – “Syndicats d’agglomération nouvelle” – syndicates of new agglomerations… Overall, it is a type of territorial authority. In France, a territorial – or local – authority is a legal person under public law that exercises certain powers over a territory.
Agglomeration communities
In fact, the communes join together within an entity in order to carry out joint projects for urban development and the improvement of their territories. It is a form of inter-communality to develop and work on projects. Thus, an agglomeration community has certain skills – more or less compulsory.
In concrete terms, the compulsory skills concern:
- Spatial planning of the agglomeration’s territory;
- Economic development;
- Social balance of housing;
- Urban policy.
Then come the skills and powers that are defined by the municipal councils of the municipalities in question. For example, in the areas of roads, drainage, water and the living environment. In addition, cultural and sports facilities and social actions are of community interest.
My job as Director of General Administration in a community of agglomerations
As Director of General Administration in a community of agglomerations, I am in charge of administrative and legal affairs as well as human resources. My tasks are varied, and no two days are alike!
Among my responsibilities, I mainly assist the elected representatives and the Deputy Director General, concerning the functioning and organisation of the general administration in our agglomeration community. You should know that a general administration of a conurbation like ours is made up of several departments. For example, the general secretary, the general resources department and the documentation department… I am therefore in charge of managing these three departments!
In addition, I organise and manage the various deliberative assemblies, the councils. I monitor regulations and oversee projects and equipment. My day-to-day work is intense, and my decisions have a strong impact.
An agglomeration community has various roles in the democratic life of the communes and numerous obligations! Particularly concerning community councils, assemblies or the various deliberations to be considered! All projects and decisions are submitted to councils.
Community Councils
The presidents of the agglomeration communities schedule the community councils at least once a quarter. The first community council generally takes place one month after the renewal of the municipal councils. In concrete terms, our agglomeration community, as an EPCI, must ensure the dissemination of information to its community councillors.
The community councillors have the power to express themselves, to propose amendments to projects, to debate… They have the right to ask us questions concerning the projects and files of the EPCI.
Dissemination of council minutes and decisions
We are responsible for the distribution of the minutes and, above all, we have to respect deadlines…! We have a considerable volume of transcriptions to make on a regular basis.
The minutes are published directly on the website of our agglomeration community.
The minutes of the councils are posted within a week on the notice board at the headquarters of the agglomeration community, as well as on the website. We summarise the deliberations and decisions of the councils – so we need two versions of the same transcript every time! A print version and a web version!
All the information to be distributed between the agglomeration community as an entity and the member municipalities must be accessible, transparently. It should also be noted that the General Code of Territorial Authorities – CGCT – provides for other mandatory information and communication mechanisms – in addition to the council minutes:
The annual report of the president of the EPCI. Indeed, according to article L.5211-39 of the CGCT, ‘the president of the public establishment of intercommunal cooperation must himself send each year before 30 September, to the mayor of each member municipality, a report tracing the activity of the establishment’.
The mayors then present this report at a public meeting of the municipal council – where the community councillors of the municipalities concerned are present.
The law stipulates that the community or metropolitan councillors themselves report at least twice a year to the municipal council on the activities of the EPCI.
Duration of council meetings in an agglomeration community
The duration of community council meetings varies. They are opened and closed by the president. There are no legal or regulatory specifications concerning their duration. Subsequent meetings are possible.
Indeed, if the subjects on the agenda are not dealt with in the middle of a council meeting, the President sometimes asks me to organise further meetings with the community council. These are often long meetings, lasting more than 10 hours – obviously with breaks in between… So we have to be careful not to slack off! We need to record everything in the best possible conditions…! Afterwards, secretaries and transcriptionists are essential!
Opting for a professional transcription service like Authôt
As Director of General Administration in a community of agglomerations, I was looking for the ideal way to help my teams… That is to say, to save us time and professionalism, so that everyone can concentrate on their core business – and above all meet tight deadlines! Fortunately, a colleague from another commune told me about Authôt!
Authôt is particularly interesting because they understand the problems and needs of town halls and local authorities. They know that we have very large volumes of transcriptions to do! Whether it’s for councils, assemblies, meetings, conferences or other types of administrative events, they are there for us. Their automatic transcription tool based on artificial intelligence is very efficient for transcribing oral exchanges – even very political or technical ones. Coupled with the human correction of their proofreading service, the words are accurate and transcribed in record time.
What we particularly appreciated – along with the general secretarial service – was the fact that we were able to do a free trial during a meeting with the Authôt team. The transcription is done automatically and their professionals also proofread. We were pleasantly surprised by their knowledge and investment in territorial, agglomeration/regional and community councils… Everything is done to reassure clients who have sensitive data to manage: their system is of high quality, fast, the platform is available 24 hours a day, we can also contact them easily… They have real added value.
Reliable and secure transcripts
In addition to an accurate transcription of the board meetings, the platform is secure – hosted in France. As director, I have an administrator account on the Authôt platform. The other members of the secretarial service also have an account, at no extra cost.
With all these advantages, relying on Authôt for our transcriptions was the best choice we could have made in the short and long term!
Authôt. You speak. We write.