Building a catalogue for local officials: matching the eligible themes

A newly approved provider designs six modules, puts them online on the platform where elected officials draw on their training rights, and finds that none sells. The problem is not commercial: two of the modules match no eligible theme, and could never have been funded. Here is how to build a catalogue that works, from listing through to choosing subjects.

Listing: the second step after approval

The ministerial approval opens the right to operate. On its own, it does not open access to the platform on which elected officials mobilise their entitlements. Two conditions are required to appear there.

Being approved by the minister for local authorities, after the opinion of the national council for the training of local elected officials. That is the prerequisite, and it is the subject of our article on building the approval application.

Being listed on the platform. Once the approval decision has been notified by the ministry, the information is transmitted directly to the Caisse des dépôts et consignations, which runs the scheme. The organisation must then be registered on the training-provider portal and submit a listing request through the prescribed access procedure.

These two decisions live separate lives, which is often overlooked. Where legal obligations or the platform’s terms of use are breached, the Caisse des dépôts may take measures up to delisting the provider, as a precaution and after notification. A provider can therefore remain perfectly approved while being cut off from the platform.

The register of themes: the constraint discovered too late

This is the rule that structures the catalogue. Courses offered under the individual entitlement must relate to an eligible theme listed in the register proposed by the steering board of the CNFEL and approved by the minister for local authorities.

Three practical consequences follow.

The match is checked before design, not after. Designing a thirty-hour module, producing the materials, then discovering that no theme accommodates it means losing the entire production cost. The right reflex is the reverse: start from the register in force, identify the target theme, then write the programme.

Excellence does not rescue an out-of-scope course. An outstanding course that matches no eligible theme cannot be funded. The criterion is objective: it is met or it is not.

The register evolves. It is approved by the minister on the steering board’s proposal: it is not frozen for the duration of a term. Checking the version in force is part of routine catalogue maintenance, exactly like updating prices.

Writing a title that sells on a platform

The individual-entitlement channel is an online sales channel, with no salesperson. The elected official compares titles in a list, without an adviser, often in the evening, often in a hurry. Three rules apply.

Name the problem, not the discipline. “Reading and voting a municipal budget” is understood in a second. “Local public finance — module 1” demands an effort nobody will make.

State the format honestly. Real duration, delivery mode — face-to-face, distance, blended — and timing. An elected official holding a job alongside their mandate does not read a catalogue the way a full-time one does.

Say what the entry level is. “No prerequisites, for newly elected councillors” beats silence, which scares off beginners and disappoints the experienced.

This question of format is not cosmetic. In an article published in 2022 in the journal Formation emploi, Pierre Camus establishes that local elected officials’ actual take-up of training depends strongly on their material conditions — resources, available time, personal circumstances — and clearly distinguishes professionalised officials, whose mandate is their main activity, from those combining mandate and employment, notably in small municipalities (see the study). A catalogue that exists only on weekdays, in daytime, face to face, deliberately shuts out a large share of its market.

Ethics: a niche few master

Among the rising subjects, the ethics of elected office holds a particular place. It answers a strong social demand and a real increase in the complexity of the elected role.

In a chapter published in 2024 by Springer in the volume Ethics and Innovation in Public Administration, Sabrina Ghallal, Pierre Camus and Thierry Côme analyse ethics training for local councillors as a managerial innovation, arising from the growing complexity of the mandate and citizens’ increasing expectation of taking part in public debate (see the study).

The subject still has to be handled properly. A study by Bruce J. Perlman, Christopher G. Reddick, Tansu Demir and Suzanne M. Ogilby, published in 2021 in the Journal of Public Affairs Education, examines what local governments actually teach about ethics and contrasts two approaches: a compliance approach centred on the rules not to break, and an integrity approach centred on reasoning and decision culture (see the study). A module that merely recites incompatibilities and offences achieves little; one that trains people to decide in grey areas achieves more. The distinction is an excellent differentiator against interchangeable competing catalogues.

Keeping the catalogue alive

A catalogue for elected officials is not a fixed document. Three maintenance appointments deserve to be scheduled.

• At every change to the register: check that each offer still matches an eligible theme.
• At every approval renewal: the programmes in the file must match what you actually sell. That renewal timetable is covered in our article on the lapse of the approval.
• Across the electoral cycle: the needs of a newly installed assembly are not those of a council in mid-term.

Take action

Take each of your offers and write next to it, in plain terms, the eligible theme it matches. The ones you cannot answer for are the ones that will not be funded: rewrite or withdraw them before wasting commercial effort. Our Approval of training organisations for local elected representatives page summarises the listing steps and gives access to our full downloadable guide.