At the start of December the fourth online course “Management of local and regional development projects” was completed. This joint initiative of Swiss-Ukrainian project “Decentralization support in Ukraine” and the State fund of local self-government support in Ukraine was launched in spring 2012, when the e-course was introduced for the first time. 560 persons registered for this year’s course, including representatives of local self-government bodies, executive authorities, academics, and civil society activists.

The studies were supervised by tutors, experienced lecturers of Dnipropetrivsk regional institute of state governance, who carefully developed the training programme.

The programme of the e-course (duration – 6 weeks, from October 28 to December 6) covered the following topics: innovations in local self-government, principles of project analysis, project planning (the principles of projects management), project budgeting, project efficiency evaluation and project implementation monitoring.

Participants studied the following issues: the key provisions of the Concept of local self-government reformation in Ukraine; the role of project-oriented       approach in achievement of strategic objectives of territorial development; the essence and specific features of absolute and relative innovations; typical mistakes made while evaluating the innovative effect of a project; the essence of project analysis as a methodology, method and technique; the role of a manager and a team in a project; principles and stages of project budget formation; specificity of financial substantiation of project costs; peculiarities of tax legislation consideration during budget formation; approaches to management efficiency evaluation in the new public management, and approaches to project efficiency evaluation; role and specific features of ongoing project implementation monitoring.

Since the time of the pilot project launching in 2012, the e-course programme has been changed in accordance to the actualized studies of customers’ needs; this approach encourages some participants to register for the e-course again; there is a group of persons, who mastered the e-course programme twice or even thrice. Beside that, active students from past years contribute to the e-course organization as facilitators, i.e., people, who create the atmosphere of joint experience, professional communication, interaction of e-course participants (with fellow students and experts).

Besides traditional testing of knowledge of studied topics, practical tasks and students’ forums for discussion of the e-course’s topics, the participants got the chance to communicate with experts in a separate “Expert room” session. Experts and practitioners discussed such issues as: state government decentralization, projects as a systematic means of strategic priority implementation, modern aspects of personnel management in public authorities and in projects, ways of successful project implementation in modern conditions.

The innovation of the third e-course “Management of local and regional development projects – 3” was the introduction of “Legal consultation” forums, which have been expanded this year. The trainees displayed particular interest in the opportunity to get consultations from lawyers regarding the issues of anti-corruption legislation usage in public service, competencies of local self-government bodies in the sphere of land relations, legal aspects of managing communal property of territorial communities. Participant of the e-course “Management of local and regional development projects – 4” L.Pasechnikova noted: “It’s so unfortunate, that “Project management” course is not a compulsory one in all higher educational establishments, because life engages more and more people in different projects, no matter what their occupations are”.

A peculiar feature of learning on the platform of Community of practice “Innovations and best practices of local self-governance”, located at the web-address mx.despro.org.ua:8081, which hosted the e-course, is that the Community of practice does not stop functioning after the studies’ completion. In the section IdeALab: laboratory of the best self-governance practices communication does not stop even outside the e-course framework, and everyone, who is  interested, can register in the community at any time (respective information can be found at the aforementioned web-address) and join the thematic discussions at IdeALab forums. Discussion topics include reformation of housing and communal services reformation, modernization of engineering infrastructure; development and implementation of projects and programmes on energy-, resource-saving, and environmental protection; educational, scientific and informational support of local self-governance development, etc. Forums “Expert room” and “Legal consultation” will also remain accessible in IaeALab section (the forums themselves are active only during the e-course, however, there is an opportunity to look through the discussions, which took place, and, possibly, find answers to your questions). 

IdeALab involves more than 2 thousand participants – you are welcome to join!