Inclusive Policy-Making (EE0049)

Shaping a policy-making process that is inclusive, knowledge-based, and citizen-centred, and developing skills
Commitment Start and End Date
April 2018 – December 2019
Lead implementing agency/actor The Government Office
Other Actors Involved State actors involved The Ministry of Finance, State Shared Service Centre, all ministries
CSOs, private sector, multilaterals, working groups Praxis, Centar, Velvet, Network of Estonian Nonprofit Organizations
Commitment description
What is the public problem that the commitment will address? The independent reporting mechanism’s national researcher (OGP 2016–2018), the Coordinating Council, and the task force of the public sector and social innovation have all emphasised the need to improve leadership and provide more training courses related to engagement.
The network of engagement coordinators of the ministries was created in the fall of 2007 when each ministry appointed one or several engagement coordinator who would be responsible for the dissemination of information and counselling regarding engagement practices in the ministry. The goal of the network is exchanging information related to engagement and harmonising the inclusion practices of the ministries. The coordinators require development and empowerment to enhance engagement practices and resolve the problems related to it.
Senior managers of civil services play an important role in supporting inclusive policy-making, as their attitudes and skills have an impact on the engagement practice of state agencies.
Prior to 2013, central training courses on inclusion were organised for 268 officials, and in 2011–2017, roughly the same number of representatives from non-governmental organisations and agencies attended the inclusion spring school. However, no additional training courses have been organised in the previous years. Some of the policy-making skills that that need promoting are evidence-based methods and data processing, storytelling, and visualisation.
What is the commitment? Improve the work of the network of engagement coordinators, strengthen the role of coordinators in ministries, and develop their leadership skills.
Improve the attitudes and skills of top civil servants in leading inclusive, citizen-centred, and knowledge-based policy-making.
Develop the skills of central governments and local officials and non-governmental organisations in engagement, negotiation, and impact assessment.
How will the commitment contribute to solve the public problem? Coordinators help to disseminate and introduce good engagement practices and increase the use of participation channels in the ministries.
Training senior manages of civil services would shape the attitudes of the managers and develop skills to lead inclusive and citizen-centred policy-making.
Training officials and non-governmental organisations improves their skills in engagement and participation.
Which OGP values is this commitment relevant to? Civic participation
Additional information The activity is funded from the administrative capacity priority axis measures.
Milestone Activity Start Date: End Date:
The organisation of work of the network of involvement coordinators has been revised and the network is actively operating.
A procurement has been published for carrying out the policy-making training programme for senior managers of civil services.
100 state or local government officials and representatives of non-governmental organisations have been trained. The programme has been reviewed and updated based on feedback from the first training groups. April 2018 December 2018
The network of involvement coordinators is actively operating.
40 top civil servants have been trained.
600 state or local government officials and representatives of non-governmental organisations have been trained. April 2018 December 2019
The network of involvement coordinators is actively operating.
40 top civil servants have been trained.
At least 700 state or local government officials and representatives of non-governmental organisations have been trained. April 2018 June 2020

2. Shaping a policy-making process that is inclusive, knowledge-based, and citizen-centred, and developing skills

Language of the commitment as it appears in the action plan [23]:

“Improve the work of the network of engagement coordinators, strengthen the role of coordinators in ministries, and develop their leadership skills.

Improve the attitudes and skills of top civil servants in leading inclusive, citizen-centred, and knowledge-based policy-making.

Develop the skills of central governments and local officials and non-governmental organisations in engagement, negotiation, and impact assessment.

Milestones:

2.1 (April 2018—December 2018):

• The organisation of work of the network of involvement coordinators has been revised and the network is actively operating.
• A procurement has been published for carrying out the policy-making training programme for senior managers of civil services.
• 100 state or local government officials and representatives of non-governmental organisations have been trained. The programme has been reviewed and updated based on feedback.

2.2 (April 2018—December 2019):

• The network of involvement coordinators is actively operating.
• 40 top civil servants have been trained.
• 600 state or local government officials and representatives of non-governmental organisations have been trained.

2.3 (April 2018—June 2020):

• The network of involvement coordinators is actively operating.
• 40 top civil servants have been trained.
• At least 700 state or local government officials and representatives of non-governmental organisations have been trained.”

Start Date: April 2018

End Date: December 2019

Context and Objectives

This commitment aims to raise policymakers’ awareness of public engagement methods and improve their skills to coordinate civic participation in policy-making processes. According to the problem statement in the action plan, there has been a gap of several years in public service training on engagement skills. Although the Network of Estonian Nonprofit Organizations (NENO) holds yearly civic participation schools where officials can participate, the government has not organized training courses on engagement and participation for public officials since 2013. [24] The action plan also states the need to foster supportive attitudes to citizen engagement among top civil servants due to their importance in shaping their organizations’ engagement culture. The commitment follows the recommendation of the IRM 2016-2018 progress report, which suggested improving civil servants’ skills and attitudes towards citizen involvement.

This commitment also aims to build the capacity of ministries’ engagement coordinators. In 2007, all ministries appointed “public engagement coordinators,” tasking one or more officials with the responsibility of supporting the ministry’s public engagement processes. In the same year, the government created a network of engagement coordinators to assist the coordinators’ work and harmonize engagement practices across the government. However, the action plan states that the activity of the network has stalled, and engagement coordinators’ roles and leadership skills should be strengthened. The IRM researcher’s survey among engagement coordinators [25] found that coordinators indeed feel a need for more collaboration with their colleagues and improving their knowledge on issues such as co-creation and moderation methods or ICT solutions for engagement. One coordinator also expressed the need to define the role of engagement coordinators more clearly.

In order to address these needs, the government plans capacity-building and networking activities for three target groups: 1) 700 civil servants and CSO stakeholders, 2) 40 top civil servants, and 3) the engagement coordinators of ministries. The commitment’s objectives and activities are clearly relevant to civic participation and address the stated needs. The government lists verifiable milestones and provides a timeline for their completion. While the milestones related to civil servants’ trainings are specific and easy to measure, the milestones related to the network of engagement coordinators are rather vague. For example, the commitment does not specify what is meant by an ‘actively operating’ network. According to the network coordinator Ivar Hendla, the Government Office aims to set up meetings of the network three to four times per year to provide a regular collaboration platform and conduct trainings on an as-needed basis. [26]

Although the three streams of activity are relevant and mutually supportive, their overall potential impact taken together will likely be moderate. The scale and scope of the training plans for the 700 civil servants (and their civil society partners) promise substantial improvements in civic engagement skills in the public sector, provided that sufficient time is allocated to civic participation in the program and the trainings are followed up by activities that help to sustain the results.

Moreover, when designing the training in 2017, the State Shared Service Center required at least 30 percent of participants to be recruited from local municipalities and CSOs. [27] The inclusion of diverse stakeholders in the training group will likely increase the impact, giving participants the opportunity to learn from each other and foster a common understanding of good civic engagement practices among governmental and non-governmental stakeholders.

Similarly, offering tailor-made trainings to public engagement coordinators and building a network for collaboration and sharing [28] could have a substantial impact on improving engagement practices in public sector organizations. According to the IRM researcher’s survey [29], engagement coordinators see the network as a highly beneficial platform for learning, capacity building, collaboration, discussing solutions to common problems and creating motivation to do their job well.

On the other hand, the third stream of activity (trainings for 40 top civil servants) will likely slightly less impact on open government compared to the other activities. The IRM researcher’s communication with Külli Toomet-Björck from the Government Office’s Top Civil Service Excellence Center revealed that some of the trainings conducted in the action plan period do include topics related to civic participation – for example, innovation leadership training also relates to collaboration with external stakeholders. [30] However, their content is based on already existing training plans which is no different from the usual practice of training top officials.

In the long-term, this commitment could be more impactful. The number of civil servants whose job entails policy-making is below 10,000 in Estonia, so at least 5% of them will have been trained as part of this commitment. Since these officials are leaders in their respective offices, a regular follow-up peer-to-peer training is expected, which could change practices of central and local government officials.

Next steps

As written, the commitment is relevant and moderately ambitious, with the three elements of the commitment reinforcing each other. However, the government could increase its impact by considering the following:

• To add value to the usual training, the module targeting top public officials could give citizen engagement a more prominent place on the agenda.
• Plan additional and follow-up activities to help sustain the positive outcomes of the training program for public officials and CSOs. Synergies could be created with the Government Office’s funding scheme for engagement projects [31] by encouraging training participants to initiate and apply for funding for new collaboration projects. This would help transform the theoretical knowledge acquired during the training into practical experience of involvement and participation.
• Analyze what further support ministries’ engagement coordinators would need to steer their organizations towards better civic engagement practices. The engagement coordinators that participated in the survey suggested that the role and tasks of engagement coordinators should be discussed and defined more clearly across ministries as not all ministries consider this a priority. The coordinators also proposed to work out a common methodology to evaluate the quality of civic engagement practices in ministries, and develop joint goals and activities based on the gaps identified.

This commitment addresses issues that will likely require continuous attention from the government beyond the action plan period. The IRM researcher therefore recommends the government plans follow-up activities in the next action plan to continue building the participation and engagement skills of both governmental and non-governmental stakeholders.

2. Inclusive, knowledge-based and citizen-centered policy-making process

Completion: Complete:

The State Shared Service Center, an executive agency under the Ministry of Finance, commissioned trainings for central and local government officials on four topics: 1) the basics of policy making, 2) public engagement and process management, 3) impact assessment, 4) and selected methods in policy evaluation. [45] Each training module lasted for one to three days and the modules were repeated four times during the action plan period. [46] The trainings were also open to CSOs – the State Shared Service Center originally aimed to recruit at least 30 percent of participants from CSOs and local municipalities. Overall, the trainings had 888 participants. About 6 percent of participants were from local municipalities and 9 percent from CSOs (in the compulsory modules on public engagement and impact assessment, the percentage of CSOs amounted to 16). [47] The Shared Service Center claims to have tried to reach more CSOs and local municipalities, [48] but according to CSOs, information on the participation opportunity could have been disseminated more widely. [49]

The network of public engagement coordinators in ministries met four times per year during action plan implementation. The coordinators revised the operating model of the network and developed a harmonized definition of the role of engagement coordinators across ministries. [50] The role involves planning public engagement processes in ministries, training new civil servants in the basics of public engagement, quality control of ministries’ public engagement processes, sharing engagement-related information and best practices within the ministry, collecting feedback from participants, facilitating non-governmental stakeholders’ communication with public officials, and helping them formulate proposals to the ministry. [51]

While work still needs to be done to communicate this role and improve the position of engagement coordinators in some ministries, the network now provides a forum where coordinators can regularly share their concerns and support each other. [52] The coordinator network is also actively engaged in the implementation of Commitment 2 in the next OGP action plan (2020-2022), which involves the collection of best co-creation practices and testing co-creation methods in central government policy making. [53]