More information
Description
Nowadays EU member states are experiencing a decline in their common democratic values. This is especially true for the countries in the former Eastern Bloc and the South-Eastern Europe, where the dissatisfaction with the quality of public services is also increasing. Therefore it is crucial for public entities in this region to establish a stronger relationship with the society, and to get capable to quickly adapt to its changing societal needs. The main objective of the COMPETENCE project is to improve the quality of public services provided by municipalities through capacity building of the civil servants. For this purpose the project wishes to improve the communication and intercultural skills of the employees of the municipalities, and thus create better relationship between the local governments and societies. The project aims also to intensify the international cooperation with the Donor States, and promote the transfer of specific knowledge generated and collected in the project in this topic for the internal education within the public sector.
The project target groups are: (1) employees of municipalities providing public services on daily basis; (2) local and regional public authorities wishing to adapt their services to meet the changing needs of the society; (3) NGOs and other bodies providing local public services and interested in capacity building for their employees. In the project implementation 5 transnational study visits and 4 stakeholder conferences with public bodies will be held to share the project results and to encourage the public actors to improve the intercultural and communication skills of their staff, 1 training course for staff delivering public services on daily basis at the beneficiary organisations will be implemented, and 1 action plan will be elaborated to contribute to efforts relating to improving the communication and intercultural skills of civil servants beyond the project partnership.
Summary of project results
Nowadays there is a growing tendency of dissatisfaction with the services provided by the public sector. This is especially true in the South–Eastern European countries. The public sector should create a closer relationship with the citizens and the society itself and be capable to constantly adopt to the new needs and requirements coming from the citizens.The goal of the COMPETENCE project was to contribute to the efforts to improve the quality of services provided by local municipalities via strengthening the skills and competences of public servants.
The partnership developed a transferable training material including topics like situation analysis, negotiation, conflict-resolution, problem-solving, integrating citizens’ inputs, adapting to and informing on legislative and regulatory changes, applied English language skills. Using this training material, each local municipality participating in the project held a training for selected public servants, mostly for those who are involved into the daily service–provision and are in personal interaction with clients. In order to strengthen the accountability and transparency of the local municipalities the partnership developed an online citizens’ information platform. Thanks to this online tool the user municipalities can place lots of detailed information to inform the citizens about the service provision in one single channel and in a better understandable format. The platform intends to bring the public services closer to the citizens.
The feedback from the training participants indicates that improving skills and competencies can result in a better quality of service provision in the longer term. The clients'' first impressions of the information platform and its contents show that clear, structured, and detailed information about public services can be useful for citizens.
Summary of bilateral results
Thanks to the participation of the expertise partner from Norway, the consortium:got a deeper insight into the structure and operation of the local governance system in Norway (2nd study visit) that is considered a basic stone of democracy.realized that the human is at the heart of the process of organising, providing and monitoring the public services in Norway.found interesting it in the presentation of the Norwegian Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development that local municipalities’ expenditures are recorded, processed and structured from a human perspective using expenditure categories like care for elderly and disabled, housing, church and culture, daycare facilities, etc.found that the transparency of the Norwegian public sector is strongly supported with publishing of data in structured form and in understandable way.found the model of only one national association of local municipalities is very effective for local municipalities’ interest representation at national legislation and policy-making level.got to learn the knowledge sharing practice among the Norwegian local municipalities and the information sharing with the citizens.realized that the introduction of the same sharing practice in our home countries is a long-lasting process.realized even if the public entities are investing a lot into modern communication channels (websites, digital initiatives) under a legal obligation or to promote themselves, the citizens’ demand to be informed is increasing, and they demand to be informed in a language they understand, in a place they can access and with a tone they can relate to.