Areas of Expertise

Public Sector and Institutional Development

The role of the government in the society has changed dramatically over the past decade. In the west, the trend in public administration has been towards privatisation of state enterprises. At the same time, most countries in transition are reassessing the role of state intervention.

In Eastern and Central Europe, and in the Newly Independent States, the trends towards free market economies and democratic systems of government raise fundamental issues of public ownership and control. As a result of these changes, public institutions have become more responsive to the market economy. They have also become increasingly responsive to the new institutional development challenges, objectives, strategies and modes of operation.

The cooperative activities of the OGI improve and complement those of various government departments, municipalities, and oblast administrations. In cooperation with these groups of institutions we address both the issues of general quality of management and decision-making, and the linkages between them, as well as linkages between the public and private sectors.

The OGI cooperative projects, which had been implemented since the 1997, are an example of what role the non-governmental organisations could play in bridging the knowledge, experience and resources of various countries in solving common environmental and other development problems.

Strategic Planning

Development planning is a complex process aimed at improved resource allocation in support of national or local goals. This process involves organisations and individuals interacting in the formulation and execution of economic and social policies. The key element in raising the effectiveness and efficiency of the use of scarce resources, in many countries, is the deliberate design and implementation of decentralisation. Redefining the role of central government and its institutions and increasing both the power and the capabilities of the local government are the issues addressed.

The OGI contributes to these processes by conducting baseline studies, facilitating development programmes formulation, and improving the capability of the agencies involved. Our experience includes streamlining the action planning, training staff and managers, organising strategic planning and retreatment workshops, designing monitoring and evaluation systems and improving day-to-day project/programme planning procedures. We assist local communities in identifying the necessary implementation instruments based on public-private partnerships.

The example of Habitat-II project, co-implemented by the Municipal Management Center "Habitat" and the OGI International shows how effectively the available resources could be reallocated in order to meet the local needs. Thanks to the Local Sustainable Development Action Planning training sessions based on the UN-Habitat technique, leaders of the Ukrainian local governments have got tools and instruments to develop their personal action plans to promote sustainable development and the UN Millennium Goals implementation.

Economic Development

Small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) have some very attractive features if economic development is an issue. Their capital requirements are modest, so the private sector can play a role even where large capital is scarce. SMEs tend to be labour intensive, helping to reduce unemployment and broaden the income base. SMEs often flourish in small and fragmented markets, including factory satellite towns and rural areas. However, SMEs and private entrepreneurs frequently lack basic business skills, such as accounting, purchasing, stock control, marketing and business planning. It is not surprising, therefore, that small and medium-scale enterprise development schemes have become an integral part of government policy in developing countries over the past two decades, and more recently in Central and Eastern Europe and Newly Independent States.

SME schemes usually have two main components: an advisory service and an effective line of credit. The OGI is bridging experiences in both of the areas. We have network of partners having capability to design and implement SME advisory services, identify potential enterprises or entrepreneurs, design and deliver training and assistance programmes for them and train local advisory staff to ensure replication of the experiences. Credit services should be bridged separately from the advisory work, preferably, in coordination with an existing financial bank and non-bank institutions.

The three-year UNDP project in Support to Small and Medium Enterprises Development in Ukraine, financed by the Government of Ukraine and the United Nations Development Programme, where the OGI was one of the two implementing agencies, is a good example of how SME development and establishing of public-private partnership could empower both the Government and the private sector in their strive to joint planning economic revival, social security and prosperity on the community level.

Social Development and Environment

Social development is about improving living conditions. It covers income generation and the provision of social services in such sectors as education, health and family planning. In many cases, when it comes to labour redeployment, structural adjustment programmes necessitate the design and execution of measures to soften the adverse, and sometimes even harsh, social effects of a transition period. Moreover, if one looks at the social development from the longer term prospective, she/he can see that sustainability of the process depends to a large extent on the environmental situation. That is why, from the very beginning of its activity the OGI pays a lot of attention to the environmental issues and application of the strategic planning technique in the area of the environmental protection.

The leading role of the OGI in the SOFIA+3 and Transboundary Environmental Cooperation projects, as well as its involvement in the UNDP SME project and its participation on the annual basis (starting from 1997) in the EURASIA Network Conferences organised by the Environmental Foundation of Turkey, are a few examples of the organisation's activities related to the social development and the environment. Currently the OGI is designing the training-course on Sustainable Development Action Planning with integrated economic instruments and the Ukrainian legislative framework.