Strengthening Human Resources for Decentralisation in the Andes
Project description
Title: Strengthening Human Resources for Decentralisation in the Andes
Commissioned by: German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)
Country: Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru
Overall term: 2012 to 2016, completed
Context
In recent years, the governments of Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru have initiated extensive reforms with the aim of modernising their respective states. The decentralisation of public services has been continued, and regional and local administrations have been given new tasks and competences to enable them to provide efficient and citizen-friendly public services.
Do the administrations have the capability to fulfil these tasks? They generally have sufficient funds, although their staff are in some cases poorly qualified. Staff turnover is high in public administration. The legal framework in Ecuador, Bolivia and, until the introduction of the new career law, also in Peru does not provide many incentives for attending further training courses.
Not enough courses are being offered outside the capitals, and nationwide their quality is often not satisfactory. The training courses do not follow a strategy for building competences in public administration. They are often planned from the point of view of central government actors and do not meet local needs. The staff at regional authorities need training programmes that provide them with practical solutions for dealing with the tasks on site.
Objective
Decentralisation and modernisation processes in the public administration of regional authorities: lead executing agencies and educational service providers take account of the experience gained in the region and offer educational services geared to local needs.
Approach
The programme focuses on four fields of action.
- In the South-South exchange, the lead executing agencies and educational service providers in the three countries pool the experience gained in human resources capacity building and learn from each other. Additional experience from the Latin American region is included as needed.
The other fields of action supplement the expert exchange on continuing education in decentralisation issues by strengthening methodological competences.
- The stakeholders improve their networking skills in order to develop coordinated and mutually supportive training policies at national level.
- The training providers expand their methodological competences in order to ensure the quality and wide geographical coverage of their services through the use of modern media.
- The lead executing agencies develop competences to evaluate the effectiveness of their further training policies.
Results
In all three countries, cooperation between the various government levels on strengthening human resources has improved. In Bolivia, for example, a network of national and subnational stakeholders has been set up to develop needs-based training courses. The network has become an important exchange platform and sets standards.
Legal frameworks have been improved. In Peru, a new career law has been passed that provides for systematic further training for public administration staff. Training incentives have been introduced.
The partners have profited from the regional exchange of experience and the systematic dissemination of best practices, which have provided important input for developing methods and processes. These, in turn, help the subnational bodies provide citizen-friendly services. Bolivia, for example, has introduced new methods for determining the costs of service provision and for identifying deficits in gender equality.
Peru has introduced a process that aligns training with the strategic goals of the institutions, thus increasing the efficiency of the services.
The newly developed processes and methods in these countries have been included in the training and advisory services of the partners and are being disseminated using modern educational concepts.