Annex 5:

5PR: Personnel Development in Municipalities and Local Governments: Training of Management and Decision-Making Skills

1. Project description

2.  Project purposes and goals

The topic of the study—the development of personnel development policies—is an important one, especially in conditions of countries in transition. Foreign experience, combined with local expertise may help a lot.

The major goals of the project were defined as follows:

1.       Data collection and analysis followed by submission of preliminary reports by academic partners.

2.       Roundtable discussion on results obtained.

3.       Development of case studies.

4.       Development of the final project paper.

3. Project realization

The project had to cope with two types of problems. The first group of problems was encountered in the course of data collection in Russian local government units. Despite the preliminary agreements, the representatives of the local governments were not benevolent when it came to actual interview conduction. Although the project team did not receive any direct refusal, the time of the meeting was always postponed and it became more and more difficult to reach the interviewee by phone to schedule an appointment. Ultimately, because of communication problems and the unwillingness to conduct an open discussion, some some local government interviews were cancelled. Yet at the same time, the project team faced none of these problems when communicating with municipal authorities.

The reason was the topic to be discussed, since government officials do not like to openly discuss topics related to their personnel recruiting and career promotion policies with people outside of government authority.

The project team also expected a more active Russia engagement in cooperation with US governmental units and in building an institutional capacity between Russian and US local government authorities in the course of the project with the help of the School of Management of St. Petersburg State University.

Some slight changes in the time schedule were due to problems with project personnel (exchange of US partner and limited cooperation).

4. Project outputs, outcomes and impacts

            In spite of realization problems, all major stages of the project were accomplished. The following activities were conducted according to the original plan in course of project implementation.

Data collection and analysis

The process of data collection was conducted independently by each partner in accordance with the First Stage Assignment distributed at project commencement. The main questions assigned to discuss during the interviews were:

·          Personnel development strategy and programs of government unit.

·          Problems associated with a possible lack of professionally educated employees, absence of educational institutions ready to provide professional training of satisfactory quality or other personnel development deficiencies.

·          Personnel development and education activities recently conducted for employees of the government unit and the role of higher education institutions in these programs.

·          Satisfaction of the government unit leader and participants with received programs of personnel development.

Apart from the interviews, the Russian partner provided additional analysis of the data obtained in the survey conducted in February-March 2001 by the Public Administration Department in cooperation with the Association of Municipalities of St. Petersburg. The purpose of this analysis was to more accurately define the problems inherent to personnel development and training in the municipalities of St. Petersburg.

Roundtable Discussion

The roundtable discussion took place in St. Petersburg on May 27, 2002. In course of the discussion, government and academic participants of the project had a chance to share the best practices of personnel development experienced in the participating countries and the opportunities of their implementation in St. Petersburg governments.

Students’ course papers

During the spring 2002 semester several third year students of the Public Administration Department prepared course papers related to the project theme under the supervision of project leader, Dr. Tatyana Kosteyeva. The main purpose of these papers was (a) to reveal the best practices in the field of personnel development from various countries including the USA and some West European countries, in particular the Netherlands and Great Britain; and (b) to identify the problems of personnel recruiting policies in municipalities of St. Petersburg. The papers were successfully defended at the end of May, 2002.

The information collected for the project was used to develop two case studies for the courses “Personnel Development” which is offered to the third year students of the Public Administration Department and “Managerial Consulting in Public Administration” which is offered to fifth year students of the Public Administration Department.

Preparation of final project paper

The final version was approved in the following form:

1)      Introduction

2)      Round table results

3)      Personnel development strategies

4)      Training programs for government servants

5)      Recruiting systems

6)      Conclusions

7)      Appendices.

            The final report ends with supplementary materials organized as two case studies devoted to personnel development policy-making in one of St. Petersburg’s local governments, and Lithuanian best practices that can be used to resolve problems of training personnel of local governments and municipalities in St. Petersburg. Since both case studies are intended for training of Russian students, they are available only in Russian.

The distribution of this final paper proceeded as follows. All participating in the project branches and departments of the St. Petersburg government as well as all the municipalities of St. Petersburg received hard copies of the report. Five hard copies of the report were given to the Library of the School of Management.

The electronic version of the final report is available at the web site of St. Petersburg municipalities free of charge.

            Excepting the aforementioned tangible outputs of the project, we need to stress existing and potential outcomes. The realization of the project strengthened the capacity of the school, and provides important future potential to be used in the implementation of the project results:

•         To conduct a series of seminars and roundtable discussions on personnel development in municipalities, with the representatives of important municipalities’ committees such as  the Personnel Development Committee and the Committee on the Interaction with Municipalities involved. These seminars can be organized both by the municipalities and by the School of Management of St. Petersburg State University. The development and improvement of the strategy of municipal personnel management is expected to be a basic result of these seminars. Interest to participating in such seminars was expressed by a number of municipal representatives.

•         To develop recommendations to the St. Petersburg government for introducing specific corrections to St. Petersburg Law on Civil Service with an eye to improving personnel development in cooperation with city personnel development committees;

•         To assist the St. Petersburg government in implementation of personnel development strategies;

•         To use case studies developed in the course of the project for “Personnel Development” and “Managerial Consulting for Public Administration” courses conducted for Public Administration Department students;

•         To develop high quality programs according to the special order of the St. Petersburg government by the Public Administration Department of the School of Management.