Portrait of graduates : Benjamin Hus - Crisis management: a sense of responsibility and public service

Benjamin HUS is Director General of Services of the Departmental Council of the North (2.6 million inhabitants, 10,500 agents, including 2,500 family assistants).

At 31, he graduated from Sciences Po Lille, major in Public Careers, Public Service Professions, promotion George Orwell (2012) and IRA Lille (2014).

His journey

First Director of Finance for the City of Tourcoing in March 2015, Gérald Darmanin made him Director General of Services (February 2016). He left Tourcoing to become Director General of Services for the Northern Department (in office since September 2018).

Crisis management: a sense of responsibility and public service

"On March 15, like in many jurisdictions, we activated the Department's Business Continuity Plan.

At this precise moment, the theory of the relativity of time became reality: the piles of initials suddenly stopped, and everything else accelerated! In record time, the Department, the parent company of solidarity, has reinvented itself in order to continue, even amplify, its human missions. As Director General of Services, I was the conductor of this real transformation of our methods of work organization and on the front line to guarantee the continuity of public service.

I was thus able to measure the agents' capacity to invalidate the prejudices that they may be subject to: more than 3,000 of them agreed to shake up their practices by switching to teleworking; several hundred volunteered for the sole purpose of being useful where the public service needed them: road agents, buildings helped to distribute several hundred thousand masks (in all of our internal services but also with our partners, health establishments and child protection), college cooks helped the Ehpads…

During this period, we assembled a Departmental Council in videoconference, as well as a Technical Committee and a CHSCT. In such conditions, the Department managed to lead a great digital transformation.

The pandemic has highlighted the agents' capacities for commitment, adaptability and solidarity, which have revealed their sense of responsibility and public service. Despite the tragedy, we have, thanks to them, written beautiful human stories. "

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Find Benjamin Hus's profile in the Sciences Po Lille Alumni directory.