Center for Adaptation of the Civil Service to the Standards of the European Union - Ms. Olena Aleksandrova: «TWINNING IS A STEP TOWARDS SUBSTANTIAL CHANGES IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION»

Main

Ms. Olena Aleksandrova: «TWINNING IS A STEP TOWARDS SUBSTANTIAL CHANGES IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION»

Thursday, 17 February 2011

During five recent years, Ukraine’s governmental bodies have been successively using Twinning as institutionalbuilding tool . Last year, when the first Twinning projects were completed in Ukraine, finally the opportunity emerged to evaluate their outcomes. For the first time, one could get answer to a long-standing question whether the results would justify the hopes of the Twinning projects’ initiators, and the most important – whether the civil servants’ efforts and labor input at the preparation and implementation stages are justified? Undoubtedly, the lessons learnt and outcomes of each individual project are somewhat specific. However, general and unquestioning fact is that Twinning proved its efficiency in achieving qualitative institutional shifts and changes in the public administration. Today governmental bodies accept and highly appreciate Twinning instrument.

This is proved by a constantly growing number of projects in the Twinning Work Plan. The number of Work Plan projects initiated by one and the same beneficiary agency has also been growing (for example, State Aviation Administration, National Accreditation Agency of Ukraine, Headquarters of Interior Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, National Electricity Regulatory Commission of Ukraine, State Statistics Committee of Ukraine etc.). So, upon completion of the first project, a beneficiary initiates the next one thus enabling to ensure translational and continual process of reforming.

One of the bright samples of successful Twinning project implementation is the State Statistics Committee of Ukraine. Preparation of the first Twinning project “Harmonizing the Ukraine's Official Statistics with the EU Statistical Standards through Introducing New Indicators into the Macroeconomic and Structural Business Statistics and Checking the Impartiality of Self-assessment of Performance of the State Statistics Committee of Ukraine” started in 2008 and twelve months later the project was set in motion. The project was implemented in Twinning Light format. In contrast to ordinary Twinning project, Twinning Light envisages, in particular, a short implementation period – 6 months – and no Resident Twinning Advisor, which means that project management responsibility is entirely vested in a beneficiary agency’s coordinator. As concern the State Statistics Committee, this is a Twinning Contact Person Ms. Olena Aleksandrova, who will provide us more details on the lessons learnt.

- Ms. Aleksandrova, as we know, the State Statistics Committee has gained vast experience in using the EU assistance, specifically, under the Tacis Program. In 2008, SSCU for the first time initiated a Twinning project. What are the advantages, in your opinion, as compared to other assistance instruments (in particular, classic EU assistance projects). What is your vision as to improving the principles of this tool operation?

Indeed, the State Statistics Committee, like other executive authorities, to the end of continuous development of institutional capacity and due to insufficient support from the national budget, have been cooperating with European counterparts under international technical assistance projects. It should be noted that TACIS projects have been no more available in Ukrainian official statistics sector since 2008. The alternative technical assistance instruments such as Twinning, TAIEX, bilateral cooperation and sector development strategy projects already existed then, but there was no clear information on their preparation and implementation mechanisms. TAIEX measures addressed solutions to important, complex, but narrow-focused problems. At the same time, the facts counted in favour of Twinning were as follows: Twinning Programme Administrative Office was in operation in Ukraine, the Main Department of Civil Service of Ukraine demonstrated enthusiasm, which inspired us to start following their model and upon the series of training sessions organized by MDCSU, and we had the problems demanding urgent solutions. So, Twinning appeared to be the best option. A special distinct feature of Twinning is that partners (from an EU country and Ukraine) bear equal and collective responsibility, and this facilitates development of international cooperation and partner relationship practices. Now about improvement of the instrument operation principles. As far as I know, Twinning Manual update is being prepared. My general wish is that Twinning regulation becomes less strict, in particular, financial restrictions. For example, raising threshold percentage of the approved budget redistribution. Fifteen per cent, as the practice demonstrated, are achieved very fast, and preparation of further amendments is an extremely labourintensive procedure and takes quite long time. Unfortunately, Twinning does not cover visa expenses.

- Did your expectations concerning Twinning instrument prove to be justified? What is your evaluation of the instrument efficiency and what are actual results of the project?

- The project was really effective. Of course, we worked much and intensively, however, we managed to achieve even more results than planned. The user manual has been developed and two big new methodology manuals for macroeconomic statistics have been translated. All of them are available at SSCU’s website. From the very beginning, we were interested in “trying” the new instrument. First, in contrast to Тасіs projects, Twinning envisages cooperation with counterparts from member states without any intermediary – nongovernmental organization. Second, the Twinning Manual describes all procedural matters. Тасіs lacked that. By the way, the project reporting procedure has been recently simplified, and Twinning falls in the categories covered.

- Is it true that the SCCU’s activities currently are recognized by Europe in full? What are the determinants of so big success, to your mind?

- Specifics of the statistics sector are that two activities should be conducted in parallel on continuous basis. The first is – development of the indicators needed by Ukrainian users (for instance, inflation rate), the second is – development of the indicators required by Eurostat from EU member states (for example, harmonized index of consumer prices). The latter activity is demanded by the governmental strategy on harmonizing national standards with the European acquis communautaire. At the same time, the national government is interested in getting new indicators in order to monitor efficiency of current government policies. Despite high work loads (by the way, 96 % of employees with state statistics bodies of Ukraine are women) and ongoing need in advance training, it is worth sometime to stop and evaluate own attainments. So, in 2006, Ukrainian statistics system was evaluated globally in the scope of Тасіs project, and the findings demonstrated that the system is consistent with the European standards by 68 %. Under this year’s Twinning projects our counterparts from the Statistics Service of Denmark evaluated impartiality of SSCU self-assessment against the principles and indicators of the European Statistics Code of Practice. As a result, SSCU’s performance got high score. Finally, I would like to remind with pleasure that the State Statistics Committee was among the first executive agencies which completed their relative sections in the draft EU-Ukraine Association Agreement.

- At present, most agencies in Ukraine prefer ordinary Twinning projects. Strictly speaking, SSCU is still the first and single initiator of Twinning Light project. Why did you decide to pioneer and start with a “short-term” project while Twinning Light project implementation, according to its principles, demand at the same time some additional input of beneficiary agency’s efforts.

In fact, this is easy to explain. First, in 2008 SSCU was implementing a large-scale project under World Bank’s financial and technical assistance. Second, the problems demanding urgent solution arose, but they were too complicated for TAIEX. On the other hand, the problems were not so plentiful to initiate a long-term Twinning project, while Twinning Light budget was quite enough for that purpose. SCCU’s top management believe that activities should be carried out, but we may not have any project “beyond control” - where more obligations are undertaken than we can meet. So, a decision was made to prepare a short-term project – Twinning Light. As to our additional efforts, initiating and implementing any project for the first time always demand additional input whatever its budget is.

- Tell us, please, about your experience of organizing and managing the project and who played the key role in the process? In conclusion, could you formulate your main recommendations on Twinning preparation and implementation to new Twinning users.

Twinning is a simple and effective in use instrument because it has been tested for many years in other European countries. Of course, Ukraine will face the time when the European Union stops customer-oriented assistance for Twinning Fiche preparation and then own efforts will have to be put to develop them. So, we should start training to develop Twinning Fiches on our own now. At present, preparation of the second Twinning project is under way in SSCU, the Twinning Fiche, like in the first project were prepared by SSCU engaging assistance from Twinning Programme Administrative Office. It should be noted that the quality of developed Fiche appeared to be rather high. Moreover, significant time for project preparation is saved. Moreover, EU technical assistance projects are supposed to be a test site for training. As to lessons learned, these are many gained in the course of work. The most important thing, of course, is that the agencies’ administration actively supports Twinning project implementers; and implementers keep in mind their final goal. What can I recommend to new users of this instrument? To read Twinning Manual and other methodological documents and seek assistance of Twinning Programme Administrative Office employees and colleagues from other Twinning project beneficiary agencies.

[ Back ]

Address: 15, Prorizna str., Kyiv, Ukraine 01601

Phone: (+38044) 278-03-21, 278-36-22, 278-36-44

E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

of the European Union

PROJECTS

OPINION POLL

USEFUL LINKS

Latest News

Documents

Follow us

Links