Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 14th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview II. Working Group on Public Sector Quality Author(s) Inese Vaivare State Chancellery of Latvia Riga Latvia Title Latvia File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Abstract Applicant: Inese Vaivare, Consultant, Public Administration Reform Unit, Policy Coordination Department, State Chancellery, Republic of Latvia. Master of political science. Country of research – Latvia. Public management reform in Latvia has been a subject for wide changes itself – starting from 1993 when a State Reform Ministry was established and it was a high priority in the public policy, by now when public administration reform is a function of State Chancellery with a 4 person unit working on it. In spite of changes in priorities of the reform, there have been achieved outstanding results in the development of policy planning system, impact assessment and strategic planning – the best approaches from different countries in Europe and beyond (e.g.New Zealand) have been used to set up an exclusive system that is already used for benchmarking in few CEE countries. Another focus of reform is on the development of human resource policy – introduction of pay system that is related to the model of competences and takes in account civil servants’ motivation to work. Unless the public management reform is based on two policy documents - the strategy and implementation plan for 2001-2006, it has been supplemented by several new policy planning documents related to the aims of the strategy – policy planning guidelines, guidelines for results and their indicators, policy guidelines for civil society development (also rare approach). At the same time two aims of strategy – introduction of medium term budgeting and promotion of quality management have been left beyond the priorities of the implementation process. Now State Chancellery has made an effort to research the situation in public administration with a regard to quality management and quality of public services. It is supposed that we will develop the common approach on the issue next year. In my opinion participation in the research project could bring several advantages as to CEE countries as to Latvia itself. At first, as the implementation of the reform plan has to be finished in 2006, next year the reform strategy must be revised and the implementation plan evaluated. That means that we have already allocated the resources and they could also be used in the framework of CEE research. On the other hand the development of public administration reform with its changing priorities and at the same time highly developed policy planning, impact assessment and strategic planning approaches could be an interesting subject for other countries. And finally involvement in international project could serve as a catalyst for the raising an issue of public management reform in political agenda again. To describe my personal competence I must point that I am the civil servant in the State Chancellery who is responsible for the evaluation of the implementation of the public management reform strategy. Besides I have been in charge of development and implementation of several programs before – youth policy program in Ministry of Education and Science and civil society development policy in the Secretariat of the Special Assignments Minister for Social Integration Affairs. References and CV are available after the request. Hoping for good cooperation and wishing fruitful work. Sincerely, Inese Vaivare +371 7082975 inese.vaivare@mk.gov.lv
