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Review and Amendment of Methodological Recommendations on Regional Development Strategies Formulation based on the experiences of Zaporizhzhia and Zakarpattya Oblasts
On March 24, 2009 in Kyiv, the Regional Governance and Development (RGD) Project in cooperation with the Ministry of Economy of Ukraine held a second round-table meeting on review and amendment of the Ministry’s Methodological Recommendations on Regional Development Strategies Formulation. The main objective of this event was to discuss the suggestions provided at the first round-table meeting and to identify any additional amendments required to ensure that the Recommendations are updated and ready to be used for addressing regional development challenges. The meeting was attended by representatives of the Ministry of Economy and the Ministry of Family, Youth and Sports, Zakarpattya and Zaporizhzhia Oblast State Administrations, academic institutions, and the NGO and expert community of Ukraine.
The Methodological Recommendations on Regional Development Strategies Formulation were approved by the Ministry of Economy in 2002 to be applied by regional governments for elaboration of Regional Development Strategies. They were prepared in response to the requirements of the Concept on State Regional Policy approved by order of the President of Ukraine in 2001. The Methodological Recommendations were developed based on the international experience in regional strategic planning, but did not include practical experience in strategic planning and implementation in Ukraine due to the lack of such experience in Ukraine at the time.
Between 2005 and 2009, the RGD Project supported participatory strategic planning and implementation processes in two pilot oblasts of Ukraine – Zakarpattya and Zaporizhzhia. The practical experience gained by these oblasts as a result of this support was recognized by the Ministry of Economy and recommended to be shared with other oblasts of Ukraine. The Ministry decided to introduce changes to its Methodological Recommendations on Regional Development Strategies Formulation in order to include the practical experience from the RGD Project’s pilot oblasts and other regions and cities in Ukraine.
During the second round-table meeting Myroslava Lendel, RGD Project Expert, Uzhgorod National University, presented the summary of key recommendations made during the first meeting and a revised draft of the Methodological Recommendations, reflecting this input. Svitlana Verhohliadova, Deputy Director, Department of Regional Development of the Ministry of Economy provided additional recommendations for improving the parts dealing with monitoring of regional strategies implementation. Ella Lamakh, Director of the Department of Family and Gender Policy of the Ministry of Family, Youth and Sports, emphasized that gender equality should be considered while developing, implementing and monitoring regional strategies. She suggested several reference documents and provided guidance with regard to integrating gender aspect into the document.
Participants of the meeting emphasized that the section of the document related to strategy implementation needed additional improvement. It was suggested that this section could be strengthened through integration of results-based management framework. It was also decided to incorporate the recommendations from the Monitoring & Evaluation workshops in Zaporizhzhia and Zakarpattya scheduled for April 2009 into the section of the document pertaining to monitoring of strategy implementation.
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