Capacity Building of Georgian Leadership

The Capacity Building of the Georgian Leadership Community 2009-2016 project (CBGL), led by GFSIS with SIPU International in a parallel contract with the Estonian School of Diplomacy (ESD) as implementing partners, was a multi-component development initiative. The overarching goal was to facilitate institutional change and to build capacity in public administration by providing policy-related, in-service training to mid-career public servants throughout the government of Georgia and the Georgian civil society.

The overarching goal was to facilitate institutional change and to build capacity in public administration by providing policy-related in-service training to mid-career public servants throughout the government offices of Georgia.

The second phase of the project that initially started in 2009 continued in July 2015, when Sida decided on core-funding for GFSIS enabling the foundation to continue the capacity building activities from 2015-07-01 until 2017-06-30.

The objective of the third component under the second phase is to strengthen the capacity of the HR function and to increase skills of HR professional in Georgian public sector institutions. A study tour to Stockholm was planned and implemented during the second phase. Its main objective was to familiarize participants with the successful reforms in Sweden in developing and setting up modern human recourses management systems. SIPU International in cooperation with GFISIS had implemented a similar study visit to Stockholm in October 2014.

The Project Objectives were:

1. ​To build capacity in public administration, public policy planning and negotiations within the Georgian public service to meet global standards and best practices (July 2009- June 2014)

GFSIS has conducted a program announcement procedure, which included sending out letters with the project description inviting ministries/governmental agencies to nominate relevant candidates for participation. The letters were sent to all eighteen (18) ministries as well as to the Prime Minister’s administration. Candidates from the following state agencies demonstrated relevance, need and better skill sets for the training and consequently were selected for the program. In order to recruit civil society representatives for the program, the project announcement was posted on the GFSIS website, as well as on www.jobs.ge. 

Under this Objective, Public Sector employees and Civil Society representatives were divided in to different groups to recieve the training. (‘Cohorts’ i.e. training modules and participant rounds). In the First cohort 2 out of 25 participants represented the civil society. The representation of the civil society increased in the later Cohorts. The second cohort represents a more diverse group of young Georgian mid-career professional both from Public Administrations and the CSO. Of the 50 total participants, 8 were from CSOs and 42 were from Government Insitutions. The training contained the following modules; Crafting Policy Papers,  Government Structures and Processes,  Legal Framework for Policy Development, Economics for Public Policy,  Trade Policy,  Research Methods in Public Policy,  Project Management / Change Management,  Program Evaluation,  Gender and Diversity,  Access to Public Information – Obligations & Rights / Ethical Aspects,  Cost/Benefit Analysis.

A Study Tour to Tallinn was held on 7 – 13 April 2011 and aimed at increasing the Georgian public servants' and civil society representitves capacity to facilitate the country’s EU integration and fulfillment of its obligations under the ENP Action Plan and the EU-Georgia Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA).

The specific goals of conducting the visit were twofold: 1) to increase the awareness of the Georgian public servants and CSO leaders about Georgia’s place ine EU integration and 2) to conduct a negotiation skills training, including intra-national communication, as well as bilateral and multilateral negotiations.

2. To establish a public policy planning and negotiations training program in the Georgian language at GFSIS (January 2009- May 2009)

Courses for this training have been prepared in Georgian and the Georgian instructors have already started teaching this year. In addition, two publications designed to promote ideas and values shared by the training were published in Georgian to be used by the program participants and Georgian public servants.

3. Improve Human Resource management practices across the Government of Georgia

GFSIS/SIPU continued series of trainings for Human Resource managers. A diverse group of human resource specialists and a group of heads of HR departments/units from almost all governmental agencies participated in the trainings 50 HR managers received capcity building on application of HR Management best practices from EU countries, all were trained in modern practices of public administration and education ministries institutionalise internal systems of effective management. The HR trainees conducted a study visit to Sweden as well, where they recieved training in SIPU headquarters, in addition to a field visit to the Swedish Ministry of Justice. (February 2014- September 2014, July 2014-February 2015).

Dates of Trainings that took place in GFSIS

• Cohort 1 December 2009 to June 2010
• Cohort 2 September 2010 to May 2011
• Cohort 3 June 2011- February 2012
• Cohort 4 January 2012 to June 2012
• Cohort 5 February 2013 to April 2013