100 participants from all oblasts of Ukraine were selected from a large number of applicants to participate in the comprehensive training program. For three months, they studied how the representative and executive bodies of local self-government should adapt to the Law “On Administrative Procedure”.
Secretaries of local councils, managers of executive committees, deputy heads of villages, towns and cities, employees of legal services and administrative service centres joined these Steps. Working on the tasks together helped them consider the specifics of practical interaction directly in municipalities.
At first, the participants found the Law rather challenging: they had difficulties with understanding how to correctly apply its provisions in practice. So the coaches started by helping them determine the following:
- Administrative units in the local self-government bodies and their exact duties;
- What should be the procedure for consideration of administrative cases and their appeal;
- What are the rights of participants in administrative proceedings;
- What needs to be taken into account to properly organise work in the local self-government bodies.
The training programme “Steps for Specialists. Administrative Procedure” combined lectures and practical lessons, helping build certain professional skills of the participants. Representatives of local self-government received answers to relevant questions, shared their experiences, processed documents and found possible ways to solve problematic aspects of the application of the law.
In addition, they had a soft skills development workshop where they learned about preventing and overcoming emotional and professional burnout and improving their mental health. This component of the training programme was in high demand because working with people often leads to a lot of stress and is emotionally exhausting even for super pros.
“Local self-government bodies and municipal institutions constantly interact with individual and legal entities. They are the authorities closest to the people, empowered to solve many issues of the population. Improving the procedures for consideration of appeals requires the efforts of local authorities to properly master the innovations, to introduce certain changes in their own local acts, and to teach each official to apply the new rules of administrative procedure. That is why we developed and implemented a training programme on administrative procedure for them,” said Iryna Kudryk, Head of the Regional Office of U-LEAD with Europe in the Chernihiv Oblast, who coordinated the implementation of this training programme.
Importantly, the Programme “Steps for Specialists. Administrative Procedure” was agreed by the National Agency of Ukraine on Civil Service. The participants who successfully completed it will receive certificates confirming 0.9 ECTS credit awarded for professional training of local self-government officials.