Program Coordinator: Fuad Suleymanov

2007 strategy for the Local Government and Public Service Reform Initiative program

The present strategy paper is reflecting the recent changes happened since last year in local government filed in Azerbaijan and proposals for the national foundation involvement into the reforming processes.
Despite that the municipalities have been elected and started functioning in Azerbaijan for about seven years already there are still a number of pending problems related to their institutionalization and effective functioning. Population in general is not satisfied with municipalities’ presence as lack of services provided and it has suspicious of one more bureaucratic stage in central government power.
Poor access to information related to municipal affairs and absence of effective mechanisms of accountability and transparency in budgetary allocations and operation of municipal development programs resulted in lack of understanding of municipal governance. Very limited audience understands the role of municipalities and takes part in discussions and the process of local governance reforming itself.
From other hand majority of municipalities in Azerbaijan experience lack of internal capacity and resources (both financial, human and technical) of effectively perform their duties as well as clear strategic vision for significant improvement of their activities.

OSI-AF tries addressing the problems but we keep us avoiding duplication of efforts of other donors and synchronizing our efforts with present realities.
It is obvious that international donor community has increased its interest towards reforming of local governance system in Azerbaijan and provided more donations in this respect.

• Asian Development Bank has started its new Cities Alliance Project within the Regional Cities and Towns Program. It aims to work on City Development Strategies (CDS) in the pilot cities of Ganja, Sheki and Mingechevir with follow-on loan and technical assistance (TA) programs in support of the CDS particularly in the areas of capacity building for municipalities. Selection of the cities was based on extensive discussions with the Ministry of Economic Development, taking into account the activities of other donors and on the opportunity and potential for economic growth in the pilot regions. One of the key outputs expected to be CDS Manual for use in other regions.
• Counterpart International in partnership with Urban Institute and International Centre for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL) won a huge USAID Civil Society Strengthening Grant for next 5 years work in Azerbaijan particularly on municipalities training in participatory local budget preparation. They selected also two regional pilot municipalities for development of capacities in identifying needs, formulate strategy and prepare budget.
• The Eurasia Foundation’s program of "Municipal Management and Budget Transparency" funded by USAID is directed towards increasing institutional capacity of selected municipalities through providing training and coaching them. The program places a particular focus on municipal budget formulation and on increasing public access to information on municipal budget planning and implementation. The program will also seek mechanisms of increasing public participation in local governance issues through providing wider public access to information on municipal affairs and increasing the level of interaction between the municipal organs and their communities. Two cities have been selected for the pilot stage of implementation of the program: Sumgayit and one at the northern regions of Azerbaijan. It is expected that such selection would help in assessment effectiveness of pilot programs in different types of locations and would assist in creating a comparative review of needs, resources and respective intervention mechanisms.
• Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe and the Norwegian Association of local and regional authorities are implementing the project on establishment of the National Association of Municipalities of Azerbaijan. It was established the Steering Group consisted of municipalities’ members to work further on institutionalization of associations (creation of three national association of cities, villages and settlements’ municipalities is expected).

Like most of other international donors operating in Azerbaijan OSI-AF considers important concentrating our activity over the awareness raising programs, professional development of municipal councils and networking of municipalities, institutional reformation. Our contribution may include supporting of following activities:

1. Organizing public hearings, town hall meetings and other forms of regular reporting to and consultations with public;
2. Providing public access to information on municipal budgets and activities through either establishing of information centers in the targeted municipalities or installation information boards and civic initiatives’ post-boxes in public areas;
3. Increasing media coverage on municipal affairs with a special focus on municipal budget formulation and mechanisms of involving citizens in designing regional development plans;
4. Strengthening the role of selected communities in conducting local needs/resources assessments, surveys and other forms of community –based data collection needed by municipalities in order to effectively planning activities;
5. Facilitating creation of capacities in forming strategic plan in targeted municipalities, including detailed description of its elements, phases, categories of required data and mechanisms of its collection;
6. Promoting volunteerism and training of municipal interns and volunteers. Working out a concept and mechanisms of attracting young people and stimulating their involvement in municipal activities;
7. Conducting trainings for municipal members and permanent staff. Training topics might include:
   • Strategic vision and planning skills;
   • Data collection and analysis methods;
   • Financial sustainability and accounting principles;
   • Local legislation and international experience;
   • Information dissemination, effective communication and transparency;
   • Volunteerism and organization of community collective actions.

In implementing these activities we would rely on a strategic alliances of comparatively active municipalities to relatively "weak" ones. Municipalities of Sumgayit, Barda and Ganja Kapaz might serve as strategic partners for sharing their best practices to others. Centre Toward Civil Society www.mcdmerkez.org, Social-Strategic and Analytical Resources Union, the environment law centre ECOLEX www.ecolex.aznet.org, Society for Democratic Reforms can be our relevant partners from the NGOs community.

The idea to use the newly started Public TV (PTV) for televised debates as an opportunity for better communication in the society and more powerful policy impact was outlined in our previous year strategy.
According to local and international observers confirmation (like a monitoring conducted by the local Najaf Najafov foundation with OSI-AF support) TV channels are the main information source as people aware about more than 90% of the news from TV.
Taking into account that PTV was established as the commitment of the government at joining to the Council of Europe we may expect more progress for promoting civil society interests and democratic values in general at this TV channel. The foundation has started consultation to international donor community aiming more efficient coordination for the program on "Public Policy Debate" at PTV. We hope to mobilize efforts and expertise of the public policy institutions and donors in getting access to PTV and discuss perspectives of public debate program. PTV would receive required support from various donors to make this program as professional as possible. OSCE, IREX, Eurasia Foundation, Counterpart International, Council of Europe and Embassies are ready to orient their financial resources for the promotion of civil society issues on PTV.
The idea of "Public Policy Debate" at PTV is based on the intention to awaken interest for democratic values and initiatives, and most importantly - to answer the challenges that exist nowadays in Azerbaijan society. Besides it can actually mitigate the increasing gap between a ruling layer and the wider groups of people striving to achieve visible progress of democratic reforms and modernization. The idea is to organize the televised debate, on-line discussions, short TV-reports to illustrate and stimulate televised debates. On-line discussions will be a vehicle to collect opinions and positions as well as to evaluate the debates; most probably it will be an opportunity in youth hands.
We have in mind two major goals of available support:

• improvement PTV performance;
• ensuring access of civil society groups to PTV for advocating important public policy issues.

It is planned to get an agreement with the PTV executives on approval of the thematic device of the public debate program. This multilateral agreement about project implementation would be expected to sign between consortium of donors, local think tanks PTV. The project components can include capacity building for project staff, technical assistance to PTV, expert assessment to the project development and evaluate progress. The project management group might meet regularly to evaluate the program implementation and recommend on-going corrections. It will also discuss thematic plan of televised debates, provide recommendations about audience, and recommend critical questions and points. The last meeting to the partners demonstrated that all parties accept the general principles of such cooperation. The said project management group might form in future into the independent think tank.