June will go down in history as a month in which Ukraine has made another major step that brings it closer to united Europe: soon the performance of Ukrainian public offices will be measured according to EU rules. Our Fund is to play an important role in implementing the guidelines and we will be responsible for transferring EU expertise.
Rafał Dzięciołowski, President of Solidarity Fund PL, and Natalia Alyushina, head of the National Agency of Ukraine for Civil Service. Kiev, 11.06.2021
The last few months in Ukraine have been marked by reforms: a new, decentralised administration is set to replace the current, highly centralised, post-soviet model. The reform, however, goes beyond strengthening the position of self-governments; it introduces the need to work out the rules for assessing the reliability and effectiveness of local public offices’ performance. Precisely this issue was at the centre of attention during the meeting between the President of Solidarity Fund PL, Rafał Dzięciołowski, and Natalia Alyushina, head of National Agency of Ukraine for Civil Service. In the wake of the meeting, on 11 June in Kiev, both parties have signed a memorandum on collaboration on implementing EU standards in Ukraine regarding the assessment of administration’s performance, known as the Common Assessment Framework.
The Common Assessment Framework (or CAF) is a tool that is commonly used across EU member states. Ukraine has first expressed its interest in the method in 2019 and has since requested that Brussels grants the status of CAF National Correspondent to the Ukrainian Centre for Adaptation of the Civil Service to the Standards of the European Union. These efforts proved successful. Now, one of the key tasks ahead of the Centre is to determine the way for adapting EU standards of administration assessment to Ukrainian needs and to subsequently implement them on local level.
Due to the systemic similarities between Poland and Ukraine, and in the light of Polish administration’s long-standing practice of using the Common Assessment Framework, Ukraine has chosen to build on Polish experience in implementation of EU standards. Meanwhile, the history of collaboration between the Centre for Adaptation of the Civil Service to the Standards of the European Union and Solidarity Fund PL has made our Fund a natural candidate to join Ukrainian partners in this ambitious undertaking. Together we are determined – in line with Kiev memorandum – to develop the best methods for implementing CAF in Ukraine on local level by the end of this year, and to initiate their roll out in 2022.
Successful implementation of the project should boost the performance of Ukrainian administration and, in the future, pave the way for local governments to secure EU funding for further development. In the longer term, we hope the reforms will translate into higher level satisfaction with the quality of public services among Ukrainian citizens.
The memorandum was signed under the “CAF-UA – quality management through implementation of Common Assessment Framework in Ukrainian public sector”. The project is being carried out by Solidarity Fund PL and co-financed under the Development Cooperation Programme of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland.