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Description
Law enforcement and translating policy into practice remains a challenge in Romania. According to the National Strategy for Strengthening Public Administration 2014 – 2020, the main liabilities/ obstacles that affect both government institutions, and the state as a whole, in fulfilling their responsibilities effectively, but also in achieving the proposed development objectives are: lack of transparency and an inefficient decision-making process, poor management of human resources in administration, excessive bureaucracy and reduced capacity to provide public services.
The main aim of this initiative is to strengthen local government capacity in Romania by increasing its accountability and transparency and by raising the awareness regarding incompatibility and conflict of interest. In order to achieve this, during the project an information center will be created during the project (e-TIC information center), that will supply information and consultancy through an on-line help-desk service to the representatives of the local authorities. Moreover training services for the representatives of the local authorities will be supplied, as well as exchange activities with similar organizations from Norway and Moldova will be organized (The Congress of the Local Authorities from Moldova).
The target group is represented by 3300 employees of the local authorities and elected officials (of which 2000 beneficiaries from communes, 800 beneficiaries from municipalities, 300 newly-elected officials - mayors, deputy mayors and local councellor and 200 elected officials and department managers from 5 pilot communes and 3 municipalities).
Summary of project results
The project aimed to address the challenges in setting-up efficient, transparent, and accountable public institutions. According to Romanian government bodies’ strategies and policy papers, the main weaknesses that hinder both local and central state institutions to fulfil their responsibilities effectively are: an inefficient and insufficiently transparent decision-making process, poor management of human resources in administration and excessive bureaucracy. All these translate in a reduced capacity to provide quality public services.
The main aim of this project was to strengthen local government capacity in Romania by increasing its accountability and transparency. Raising awareness regarding incompatibility and conflict of interest was another objective of the project.
The main objectives of the project were the following:
- promoting a transparent decision-making process at the local level by improving the public consultation processes and by encouraging the citizens to increase their participation in this process;
- Promoting best practices of organizational ethics from Norway and other Western European countries in the public administration;
- Training in key issues, such as good governance, ethics and transparency and incompatibility and conflict of interest.
The project consisted of 142 training sessions for elected officials and civil servants in issues like good governance, ethics and transparency and conflict of interest.
The project also created E-TIC, an online information center, which, apart from all the documents created during the project, contains several relevant materials on legislation, best practices examples from Romania and Norway, guidelines and reports and case studies. The users of the information center also have the possibility to address questions to the experts of the project.
Another important output of the project was the creation of a network of resource persons (138 representatives of local authorities), who will contribute to the replication of the results.
This project reached its target groups, and all the major indicators were duly fulfilled. A total number of 3544 of elected official and public servants received training in transparency and conflict of interest issues, while a total number of 1127 communes and municipalities from all the 40 counties of Romania were covered. The E-Tic online center will continue to be an important instrument for the public servants in the following years. The final beneficiaries of the project will be the citizens of the involved communes and municipalities who will ultimately benefit from better quality public services.
Summary of bilateral results
The Norwegian partner, KS, was involved in all phases of the project''s implementation. KS experts participated in all the training sessions with the project''s beneficiaries, sharing and promoting good practice models from Norway in all four project areas: good governance, ethics and transparency, and incompatibility and conflict of interest.The bilateral activities also included five study visits to Norway, in which a total of 65 people, representatives of local authorities from Romania, participated. These visits included meetings with representatives from various local authorities (Moss, Elverum, etc.) in the donor state, with the agenda covering details about the Norwegian electoral system, local procurement strategies, social responsibility, urban regeneration, etc.After the project''s completion, the Association of Communes of Romania and KS agreed to continue their collaboration, including by proposing initiatives for the future program.