Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 16th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview I. Working Group on Local Government Author(s) Zuzana Khendriche Trhlinova Institute of Finance and Administration Praha 10 Czech Republic PhDr. Jaroslava Kaderabkova ing. Zuzana Khendriche Trhlinova Title Developing of local partnership as a challenge for local development initiatives File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Abstract Czech cities and regions are starting to use more and more new managing methods based on partnership with private sector as well as with the NGO and other civic association. This process is relatively recent and the integration of the different models of partnership to general practice still meets a lot of constraints. The objective of this contribution is to present the framework of the development of the partnership between public and private sector and civic sector in Czech Republic and to show some experiences learnt from the actual implementation process. Special attention is paid to the main barriers of the more intensive use of partnership models in preparation and realization of the development projects on local level. Czech Republic has also a very specific settlement structure with many rural communities and with small and medium sized towns. At the same time the municipalities received many competences without adequate financial resources during the decentralisation process that was realised from 1990 to 2003. The municipalities solved this problem first by selling the municipal property and then by the loans during in the nineties but these possibilities are nowadays limited. That’s why the local self-government bodies are addressing themselves more and more to the private and non profit sector to create functional cooperating structures. The demand to realise the development projects on the base of partnership models in Czech Republic grows also in the framework of the EU programming period 2007-2013. It is considered that the private and non profit sector will play an important role in co-financing development projects. Promotion of different types of partnerships in Czech Republic still meets many contraints. The experiences of local administration with integration of partnership projects are limited in Czech Republic with the comparison with other EU countries. There are many reasons of the tardive preparation of partnership concepts of development projects in Czech Republic, between others it’s the lack of political support to this types of projects, lack of knowledge about the advantages of partnership, lack of trust of the civic sector to public administration and others. The important barrier of the PPP projects realisation is also lack of the internal as well as external communication and in many municipalities absence of long-term partnership networking strategy. Many citizens, associations and other actors are afraid of the corruption that could be linked with the partnership projects (especially of private sector). Many municipalities don’t pay a special attention neither to the information dissemination about the basic principles of partnership projects neither to the common discussion with the citizens and civic association. Creation of the essential environment that will permit successful realisation of development projects based on partnership models depends on many factors and needs involvement of many actors on all level of public administration management. There are many important steps to be made: stabilisation of external context (legislation, competencies, public finance stability), continuing the process of the public administration modernisation (especially continuing formation and expertness increasing on all level of public administration), application of new methods of the management quality in public administration, strengthening of communication and partnership between public sector, private sector and citizens, elaboration of a consistent approach for partner consultation and many others arrangements.
