HOW TO BE A BETTER POLICY ADVISOR, Odessa 2002

Training Programmes /

„How to be a better policy advisor“
Training course for advisors
Odessa, Ukraine, October 2-5, 2002

Written by Ieva Lazareviciute, Project Expert

In October 2002 a training course “How to be a better policy advisor” that by now has become a regular NISPAcee training event, took place in Odessa, Ukraine. The seminar has attracted participants from many neighboring countries such as Russia, Moldova, Georgia as well as the more distant partners from across the Black Sea (Bulgaria). The various regions of Ukraine were widely represented as well. The Odessa Regional Institute of Public Administration, Ukrainian Academy of Public Administration, Office of the President of Ukraine, a long-term partner of both NISPAcee and UNDP hosted the event.

The seminar was based on the training programme developed under the auspices of the UNDP RBEC Regional Support Centre / NISPAcee project “Building Advisory Capacities in CEE states”. For the comfort of the participants and all NISPAcee member institutions the advisory manual “How to be a better policy advisor” was translated into Russian and was used during the training event.

Twenty participants from various academic and public institutions have spent four days discussing the various aspects of policy advisory process and its peculiarities in the post-Soviet region. The discussions facilitated by an international team of trainers /Ms. Ieva Lazareviciute – Lithuania, Ms. Lesya Il´chenko-Syuyva – Ukraine, Mr. Gyorge Shopov - Bulgaria and Ms. Saodat Kasimova - Uzbekistan/ created a unique opportunity to share experiences of working with governments in different countries at different levels and informing each other on the various solutions and approaches adopted while working with the politicians and public servants.

Moreover, using active training techniques a considerable amount of time was spent developing analytical, inter-personal communications as well as methodological skills of the participants. The participants indicated that the diverse knowledge and new skills the have developed during this training seminar will be very useful for them both in their work as advisors and in their teaching and research activities.

Finally the experience and suggestions of the participants of the four advisory training events, including the one in Odessa, have helped the team of trainers to produce a manual for trainers. The manual is based on the approach adopted by the authors of an advisory handbook “How to be a better policy advisor”. It includes all training materials used for this programme complete with practical exercises and advice to the trainers interested in delivering this programme to the future audiences. The manual will be available from the NISPAcee Secretariat in spring 2003.

In the frame of the next project phase in the year 2003 NISPAcee intends to develop a new training manual on ‘Building advisory capacities for Institution Building in EU affairs’ and to organize two pilot training courses „How to be a Better Policy Advisor in the Administrative Capacity Building for the EU Integration“. The main objective of this project phase is to develop advisory capacities to assist the governments of the EU candidate states in Central and Eastern Europe to cope with the requirements of institution building in the frame of European integration and to support public administration development in all CEE states.

Participants

Gabriela Petkova, Bulgaria

Polya Katsamunska, Bulgaria

Martin Gramatikov, Bulgaria

David Nozadze, Georgia

Lapin Veaceslav, Moldava

Tatiana Savca, Moldava

Svetlana Pinzari, Moldava

Yulia Potanina, Russia

Konstantin Markelov, Russia

Natalya Kolisnichenko, Ukraine

Tatyana Pakhomova, Ukraine

Vitaliy Bashtannyk, Ukraine