Creating a user-centred public service: 
training through open and distance learning in Ukraine

Paper by Susie Andretta, Aidan Rose and Wendy Shelley, to be presented at the Seventh Annual Conference of the Network of Institutes and Schools of Public Administration in Central and Eastern Europe (NISPAcee), Sofia, March 25-27, 1999

Susie Andretta is Senior Lecturer in the School of Law, Governance and Information Management, Faculty of Environmental and Social Studies, University of North London, Ladbroke House, 62-66 Highbury Grove, London N5 2AD, UK. s.andretta@unl.ac.uk; tel +44 (0)171 753 5155; fax +44 (0)171 753 5766.

Aidan Rose is Reader in Public Administration and Public Management in the School of Law, Governance and Information Management, Faculty of Environmental and Social Studies, University of North London, Ladbroke House, 62-66 Highbury Grove, London N5 2AD, UK. a.rose@unl.ac.uk; tel +44 (0)171 753 5155; fax +44 (0)171 753 5766.

Wendy Shelley is Manager of the Institutional Strengthening Project (Ukraine), Faculty of Environmental and Social Studies, University of North London, Ladbroke House, 62-66 Highbury Grove, London N5 2AD, UK. w.shelley@unl.ac.uk; tel +44 (0)171 753 5155; fax +44 (0)171 753 5766.

Views expressed in the paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions to which they are attached.

Introduction
The creation of a new system of public administration which delivers services to the public requires that public servants are equipped with new sets of knowledge, skills and competencies.  For a country with a population of over fifty million, with the largest land mass in Europe and relatively poor communications, this represents an enormous task.  Traditional methods of public service training revolve around taught courses based at academies in regional centres.  This prohibits the training of large numbers of officials who, for a variety of reasons, cannot attend such courses.  Open and distance learning provides an opportunity to extend training opportunities to these groups.

Work that is currently taking place at the Academy of Public Administration focuses on developing open and distance learning materials for courses in Modern Problems of Social and Humanitarian Policy and Public Management.  One of the challenges which the development team faces is the question of how to equip public administrators with the people-centred skills which are vital to the creation of a user-centred public service.  
It is our aim to set up a working group composed of participants at the NISPAcee conference who are involved in similar projects and who would be interested in participating in such research with the intention of sharing the findings with the rest of the group and beyond.  Please contact the authors at the addresses above.

The Ukrainian Academy of Public Administration (UAPA)	
The Academy of Public Administration, Office of the President of Ukraine, delivers a Masters in Public Administration (MPA) in full-time and part-time modes to equip civil servants with the theoretical and practical skills required to perform effectively within the economic transition currently taking place in Ukraine.

The Academy is composed of the centre in Kyiv and four regional branches in Lviv, Kharkiv, Odesa and Dnipropetrovsk. There is a difference in the profile and needs of students who attend the MPA in Kyiv and those who study at the regional branches. From the perspective of public administration, civil servants in Kyiv are predominantly concerned with policy development and support systems which illustrate an emphasis on social policy as perceived from the central administration’s perspective.  In the surrounding regions the focus of public administration rests on implementation by the local administration and consequently on specific management responsibilities. These regional differences are clearly reflected in the interests of the students attending the MPA and consequently influence the way the curriculum is addressed by the respective centres.

The demographic factor also plays a part in distinguishing between the needs of students from Kyiv and those of students from the branches. The impact of this is illustrated by the need for different modes of curriculum delivery. In Kyiv, for example, face-to-face delivery is preferred.  In the case of the regional branches, face-to-face delivery is often impractical.  To address this problem, the Academy has embarked upon a project of developing a Distance Learning (DL) approach for part-time students, in co-operation with the Institutional Strengthening Project (Ukraine) (ISP(U)) at the University of North London (UNL) which is funded by the Department for International Development through the Know How Fund.

In the context of this project, distance learning  is defined as including 
‘...the various forms of study at all levels which are not under the continuous, immediate supervision of tutors present with their students in lecture rooms or on the same premises, but which, nevertheless, benefit from the planning, guidance and tuition of a tutorial organisation’.

The Maney model
Maney’s partnership approach examines the relationship between organisations  engaged in public sector training programmes. He lists three main players in this model: “1) donor agencies; 2) training contractors in the donor countries; and 3) training provider organisation in Central and Eastern European countries [CEE] .” (Maney, 1997, pp. 343).

In this paper we will examine the relationship between the training contractor, UNL, and the training provider,  the Academy, that evolved during the development of the DL project. The role of the donor agency, the Know How Fund, is implicit in the outputs and outcomes set out at the beginning of the project, these are:

•	Self study materials for two modules of the MPA;
•	Transfer of expertise in modern distance learning methods by lead Ukrainian staff including DTP skills;
•	Distance Learning materials covering two modules of the MPA or in-service training programme;
•	A framework for development of distance learning strategy at UAPA.

One particular outcome, which is relevant to this evaluation, is the “transfer of expertise in modern distance learning methods ...” where it is expected that UNL’s expertise in DL will be passed onto the staff at the Academy within the life span of the project.

Maney envisages this as a process of “transition”  implemented by a series of stages which identify different relationships between the training contractor and the training provider. These stages are illustrated in  Table 1.
Stages	Role of foreign trainers	Outcome for CEE training 
organisations	
Stage 1	Experts	Dependency	
Stage 2	Facilitators	Self-sufficiency	
Stage 3	Partners	Complimentarity	

Table 1: Stages in the Transition Process (Maney, 1997: pp.  346)

This process of transition will be used to evaluate the relationship that has developed between UNL and the Academy. In our view the time  dimension is missing from this model, for example, are all stages of an equal length?  The sequence of the stages also needs to be elaborated further. Maney seems to imply that stage 1 is followed by stage 2 and 3 in a linear fashion.  In our experience this is not necessarily the case, as stages 1 and 2 have emerged more than once during the course of the project, while stage 3 has not yet been accomplished.

The Distance Learning Project 
The initial visit occurred in February 1998 in Kyiv where the preliminary discussion centred around the terms of reference and laid the foundations for a complete DL operational programme. 

In practice this meant an evaluation of the Academy’s current Learning and Teaching policy in order to ascertain the Academy’s knowledge in the subject of DL and student-centred learning. We found a teaching and learning policy firmly rooted in a tutor-centred/passive learning approach which would not be suitable for DL delivery. Accordingly, the strategy devised at this meeting  aimed to address local academic needs both in terms of developmental and implementational terms. It became clear from the outset that staff at the Academy expected UNL staff to take a leading role during this visit and this seems to confirm the first stage  devised by Maney (1997) where the foreign trainers are seen as experts and the outcome for the Central/Eastern European training organisation is one of dependency.

As the result of this visit a plan was drawn up which are based on the following principles:

1.	The DL programme would involve primarily the four regional branches of the Academy located in Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Lviv and Odesa. This decision was based on the initial profile of the students which illustrated clear work related and demographic needs for a more flexible delivery of the MPA by the branches. Staff development on innovative teaching and learning methods was also planned at this stage.

2.	The DL programme needed to be based on technology that would be accessible to both staff and students.  Participants agreed to use printed and A/V media during the first stage of the project and computer-based learning once the ICT infrastructure was  fully operational at the Academy, and access to computer equipment and electronic sources was available to all students. This is in line with the pattern adopted by other DL projects in the same subject area, such as the one illustrated by Shepherd at the Central Queensland University in Australia (1998, pp. 62)

	The branches were also divided into two teams and each selected a module to be translated into DL resources and piloted during the course of the project, these were: Modern Problems of Social and Humanitarian Policy (Kharkiv/Lviv); and Public Management (Dnipropetrovsk/ Odesa).  

3.	A student profile was required to ascertain the learners’ academic needs and expectations and their study behaviour.  The outcome of this survey  would help structure the DL material and impact on the academic and administrative support offered by the project.

The next visit was held in June of the same year in Odesa and concentrated on the implementation of a DL policy, and on the exploration of innovative assessment techniques, such as self and peer assessment, as these are more appropriate in the context of DL delivery. 

This event also marked the beginning of the shift from dependency to self-sufficiency. Maney characterises this stage as an “extensive and continuing dialogue” (Maney, 1997, pp. 347) and this is paralleled by our experience at this point in the project. Staff at the Academy had, by time of this visit,  designed and produced the first draft of the DL material and this gave them a tremendous sense of achievement and a boost in self confidence. Four participants, one from each branch, began to emerge as playing a pivotal role in the project and this was reflected in their active contribution to the future direction of the DL programme. As a result of this, a process of constructive negotiation ensued between UNL and Academy staff which resulted in useful suggestions by the teams such as the production of a glossary to ensure that a common academic terminology was used.

The visit in November had the dual roles of providing feedback on the material, which was continuously being upgraded and edited by the two teams, and of identifying specific staff requirements in the development of skills needed to implement the piloting stage of the project and evaluate its  outcome. 

Evidence of self-sufficiency grew as the teams requested a private meeting to take place prior to the meeting scheduled with UNL staff. During this meeting the teams felt the need to discuss issues of mutual concern regarding the production of DL material and to prepare the ground for further negotiations with UNL staff.  Also, during the visit, the teams restructured the students’ questionnaire with the intention of completing the survey in time for the next visit. The four participants were officially recognised as the representatives of their branches in the DL project. This encouraged staff to develop a support network across the branches which was helpful within the context of the DL project because it minimised the feeling of isolation dictated by the branches’ geographically peripheral positions.

The network was extended to UNL staff owing to the close collaboration that had developed during and in between visits, and this increased the hopes by UNL staff that a more equal partnership was evolving.

In January 1999 the four participants visited London for an intensive two -  week training programme that would prepare them for the piloting stage. Apart from a feeling of euphoria from the teams, as three out of the four people had never seen London,  expectations ran high on the UNL side as the teams seemed to be growing in confidence and self-sufficiency at a rapid pace. We were expecting the third stage of complimentarity,  shown in Maney’s model, to emerge at any time during the course of the visit.  Here a clear profile of the students was established from the survey and the teams were given extensive feedback on the DL material in relation to content and DL structure.

Unfortunately this visit was characterised by several problems which, with hindsight, could be attributed to a very ambitious and intensive programme and an underestimation on our part of the teams’ feeling of being overwhelmed owing, in part, to their limited knowledge of English. 

This is where the partnership began to slide back to the first stage of “expert-dependency” and UNL staff was forced to assume a leading role once again. It is a contention of this paper, therefore, that the model proposed by Maney is not as sequential as he has presented it, but that, on the contrary, the relationship between institutions can oscillate from stage 1 to stage 2 a few times before the final stage of complimentarity is reached.

Two more visits are planned, one in June 1999, where we aim to complete the material for the two DL modules, and one in Spring 2000, when a strategy outlining  the future development of DL will be finalised. Whether the partnership will reach the final stage of complimentarity within the life span of this project remains to be seen.

The profile of  part-time students
Some results from the student  survey are briefly examined here to illustrate the impact of their expectations and requirements on the structure and content of the DL material and on the training required by the staff from the Academy.

The majority of the students sampled are male, have a scientific undergraduate qualification and are located in senior management positions within the civil service hierarchy. Therefore the types of skills required are those linked to senior management activities such as chairing, project and team management, presentation, negotiation and interviewing.  As a result of this, and in response to a request from the teams, the programme of the January visit was altered to include training practices in general communication skills which the Academy staff could use in both DL and mainstream deliveries. 

Students’ motivation is high owing to the strong link between a successful completion of the MPA and career advancement as well as expected improved performance at work.  Such a drive is particularly important in a DL programme where students cannot take full advantage of the face-to-face support and rely mainly on the DL material to assimilate the curriculum.  On average they are prepared to spend at least four hours per week on their studies and the most popular format of information is printed material, although some students did express preference for A/V resources when these are available. The media used for information gathering seem to vindicate our  initial bias for printed and A/V technologies, especially since a large percentage of students in the sample claimed to be IT illiterate.

In addition, students tend to rely heavily on the Academy’s libraries and on public libraries as their main sources of information. The implications of this were discussed with the teams in order to ascertain students’ access to support material.  The responsibility for access to resources was a point of disagreement between UNL and Academy staff. The former attempted to emphasise the importance of making arrangements with libraries and other supporting institutions, such as the British Council’s premises, to facilitate students’ access to the materials needed to supplement the DL workbooks, while the latter preferred to adopt a less proactive approach and shift the onus of gathering the information onto the students. 

Such a reactive attitude can be attributed to two main reasons: the lack of a strategic approach towards the implementation of the DL project and the apprehension of taking on yet another responsibility on top of an already busy schedule.   The first issue has been addressed by staff development programmes, while the latter points to the need for a reward system to ensure full academic commitment to the project. Rewards, in this case, could take a variety of forms from time off to financial remuneration.  However, this is a management issue that can only be addressed by senior management at the Academy.

Preference expressed by students in relation to assessment seemed to point towards a rather passive learning approach as tutor-based assessment was given priority.  However,  this could be indicative of the students’ lack of awareness of innovative self-assessment procedures rather than an accurate expression of their preference.  This point is illustrated by the positive response of students in Lviv when faced with an interactive seminar organised by UNL staff.  The feedback session showed that students, despite the lack of experience in this kind of innovative mode of delivery, would welcome a shift from passive to independent learning. 

It must be stressed that the students targeted by the DL programme occupy positions of responsibility within the civil service hierarchy, and it is therefore expected that they would not be afraid of assuming a more independent attitude towards their studies.

The Learning & Teaching (L&T) approach
The framework used to design the DL material is based on the Learning Process model developed by  Phil Race (1995, pp. 19). Here the four processes are identified as: wanting (or motivation) ; doing; digesting and feedback and refer to specific learning activities involved in the learning process.  Table 2 gives examples of how these processes translate into characteristics of Open and Flexible Learning  and provide a sound structure for DL material:

Process	Face to face 	Open & Flexible Learning (DL)	
Wanting	Tutor’s interaction	Learning objectives	
Doing	Activities	Exercises	
Digesting	Time to reflect/adopt new concepts	Time to reflect/adopt new concepts	
Feedback	Assessment	Self -assessment	

Table 2: Learning Process Model, Race (1995); pp. 21

There are several advantages in adopting such a model. Firstly it directly translates the pedagogical theory into a practical framework with clear guidelines on how to structure the DL material. We found this model very effective as staff at the Academy did not have clear ideas about DL and wanted a structured approach to follow. 

The adoption of a clear pedagogical model did not diminish staff’s reluctance to adopt innovative approaches such as the articulation of  active learning objectives and the use of self-assessment. For example the term “self assessment questions” was translated as “control questions” by the Academy’s staff.  The translation, we were assured, was accurate, but, once translated, the term conveyed an inevitability and passivity about the assessment which we were trying to eliminate through the use of learner-friendly and student-empowering terms.  Such an incident justified the concern of UNL staff that the transition to DL would be problematic.

It is important to highlight this, as most academic institutions who undertake a shift in their teaching and learning policies, to incorporate a more flexible approach, face some degree of resistance from academic staff.  Similarly, at the Academy,  the introduction of a DL delivery mode has initiated a radical cultural shift forcing academics to move from the traditional lecture/exam delivery to a more interactive approach where the tutor plays a facilitating role in the learning process.  

Nick Slope, Open and Distance Learning Development Manager at Thames Valley University, claims that one way of ensuring success, in this case, is to concentrate on a small group of people and win the rest of the academic staff over,  once the initial project has shown positive outcomes. This approach is lengthy but effective as long as it is associated with tangible benefits and rewards.  Our project has certainly benefited from the establishment of an identified group of people and, although in small scale, benefits have already occurred through the creation of a helpful academic network.

The second advantage provided by the Learning Process model is the emphasis on the development of transferable skills covered by the Learning Process model’s stages of doing and feedback.  The students targeted by the DL programme are in full time employment and therefore constantly in situations where the theories and practices of PA can be applied. This, together with the students’ explicit requirements of developing  managerial skills, offers a unique opportunity to reinforce the learning process through the application of the Public Administration’s theoretical framework in the workplace. 

Problems encountered:
The need to  improve communication between partners is an issue that has been raised before at the NISPAcee conference in Tallinn (Maney, 1997). Poor communication between staff at UNL and the Academy  was a problem that caused some delay at the beginning of the project in establishing clear operational parameters. This, however, was minimised by setting up a group composed of  individual representatives from the branches, who became responsible for active participation in the DL programme, and a member of UNL staff playing the role of DL advisor in the project.  

There are still some obstacle to the optimisation of communication channels between the two institutions owing to lack of a common language and unequal access to e-mail experienced by the staff at the Academy. The technical limitation is the only factor which depends on developments outside the control and funding of the DL project. The improvement of communication channels, and in particular increased access to e-mail, requires a considerable investment from the part of the Academy.  It is therefore expected that communication problems between institutions will play a significant role for the remain of the project.

In our experience poor communication between staff at the Academy  is also a problem and affects the dissemination of decisions taken in the course of the project.  Various departments in the Academy, who are not directly involved with the DL project, have often contacted UNL staff for an update on the stage of the programme rather than address the Academy staff involved in the project directly.  For example, when a new head of the IT department was appointed recently he sought clarification from UNL over the role that his department would play in the DL programme.  In this instance lack of communication within the Academy meant that the IT department expected the DL programme to be entirely IT-based. Understandably the head of IT was becoming increasingly worried about being able to support such a venture.  We were surprised to find that the Ukrainian participants in the DL project had not approached the IT department to keep them appraised of developments and for support in the production of the DL material.

The responsibility of developing and maintaining good communication channels at the Academy is another issue that needs to be addressed at an institutional level and cannot be tackled by the DL project as it illustrates another example where a shift in culture is required and where information is shared widely rather than hoarded.  

This issue is directly related to the development of self-sufficiency advocated by Maney. Although he argues for the foreign trainers to assume a “role of information broker” (1997, pp. 347) in our experience this position should be taken on gradually by the staff  from the Central and Eastern European organisation, the Academy in this case, if the process of self-sufficiency is to be completed successfully. 

Culturally dictated expectations are another factor that had significant impact on the progress of the project.  Hague and Rose touch on this issue by stressing the importance of analysing the “variance of cultural factors and the relationships that exist between the various parties involved in the process” (Hague and Rose, 1997, pp. 329). Maney also discusses the importance of “cross-cultural sensitivity... [and] .. mutually agreed arrangements for resolving conflicts” (Maney, 1997, pp. 346) during the first phase of the Transition Process model. Our difficulties arose when trying to achieve a balance between the implementation of the project’s objectives and satisfying the expectations of the participating staff from the Academy.

Future developments
It is expected that this initiative will result in the following outputs:
•	Alumni Network: 
One major development that will emerge from the DL programme is a graduate network set up in cooperation with the Alumni’s Association. Initially this network would offer academic and professional support to DL students  through a mentoring system, where students, who have graduated, would mentor students who are attending the MPA. In the long term, however, the network could expand to cover the running of open lectures, discussion fora and professional development workshops.

This initiative would largely be developed to counteract the lack of support caused by limited access to electronic communication. However,  if successful, this network could expand beyond the remit of the MPA and  provide an effective platform for discussions and exchange of ideas within the civil service.

•	Working group:
Once the DL programme is fully operational the effectiveness of DL delivery  will need to be measured against the impact of a more traditional mode of  delivery in order to ascertain the impact of a skill-oriented approach on the performance of the Ukrainian civil service. 
The evaluation would examine the types of assessments set by traditional and DL approaches against work performance of students who have completed the MPA in traditional and DL modes of study. 

As this paper has shown, the DL programme reflects an innovative approach to the delivery of the curriculum, where the focus is on the importance of providing practical applications for the theoretical framework of modern PA. Delivery innovations, however, are complemented by a new approach to the subject of Public Administration where the focus rests entirely on the transformation of a highly bureaucratic system into a user-centred public service.  It is therefore expected that the DL delivery of the MPA’s curriculum will improve the performance of civil servants by equipping students with effective management techniques and strategies they require to ensure a successful transition.

Conclusion: Code of good practice in DL
The issues raised by this project point towards specific factors that need to be addressed to ensure a code of good practice in the training of civil servants:
•	Adoption of innovative teaching and learning methods to promote ‘active and independent’ learning. A cultural shift  is required for both distance learning and mainstream delivery to guarantee development of transferable, problem solving and decision making skills required by civil servants;

•	Use of appropriate technologies to support curriculum delivery; this is particularly  relevant in cases similar to the Academy’s where the IT infrastructure cannot yet adequately support its staff and students;

•	Closer co-operation between branches (if the institution is composed of more than one) is required to ensure curriculum standardisation, avoid duplication of efforts and deliver high quality learning that is translated into the development of transferable skills that will enhance the performance of civil servants and their ability to contribute to the creation of a user-centred public service.

References:

Hague, J & Rose, A (1997) “Values in Action” in J. Jabes (ed) Professionalisation of Public Servants in Central and Eastern Europe. Bratislava; NISPAcee, pp. 329-341

Maney, A (1997) “The benefits to using a partnership approach to education and training in public administration and community development”. Professionalisation of Public Servants in Central and Eastern Europe. Bratislava; NISPACEE, pp. 342-349

Race, P (1995) “The Open Learning Handbook”, Kogan Page Ltd (second edition)

Shepherd, D “Teaching Public Management by Distance Education: some experiences at a regional University in Australia”. Teaching Public Administration, Spring 1998, Vol. XVIII, No. 1, pp 48-64