Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 29th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview WG3: Public Administration Reform in CEE and CA (Physical) Author(s) Nino Dolidze Ilia State University Tbilisi Georgia Title Principle of Accountability and Establishment of Politically Neutral Civil Service in Georgia File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Nino Dolidze Abstract One of the six SIGMA PAR principles, accountability, is measured in two main dimensions: 1. transparency of the government decision-making and functionin and 2. participation of non-state actors. Both are critically important to sustain public trust in government and maintain political stability in a developing country. In a contrary, non-transparent and non-participative decision-making process leads to a sharp drop of public trust and increases the degree of politicization of the public sector. The goal of the PAR in Georgia, as declared in the Law on Civil Service 2015 is to establish a system of professional and politically neutral civil service; thus, it is critical to institutionalize both factors and put implementation mechanisms in place their. These two main components of accountability are regulated by two legislative documents: the Civil Service Law adopted in 2015, which defined the establishment of professional, career-based civil service and introduced specific mechanisms for elimination of political influence; and the Government Ordinance #629 2019, On elaboration, monitoring and evaluation of policy documents, which broadly sets the standards of the policy-making cycle within the executive govenrment and participatory processes. In the reform process, two agencies are consequently responsible, the Civil Service Bureau and the Government Administration, which seek to establish institutional set-ups and regulations to implement these principles of accountability. The purpose of the presented paper will be to evaluate the effectiveness of their implementation, namely regarding two major goals: 1) Transparency of government decision making process and involvement of the non-state actors – which embraces the whole cycle of policy process, regulated by the Government Ordinance #629 2) Establishment of a politically neutral civil service, including the analysis of the legislative framework and the evaluation of the effectiveness of its implementation in practice in terms of protecting civil servants from political influence. Accordingly, the research questions will be: RQ1: How do the main stakeholders assess the level of transparency of government decisions and involvement of the non-state actors in the policy-making process; RQ2: How is the existing legal framework regulating the protection of a professional civil servant from political influence. Expected findings: The study will identify gaps between regulatory framework documents and their practical implementation, enabling us to develop recommendations at the sectoral level for establishment of politically neutral public sector and transparent, evidence-based policy making system.
