Improving training for local government in Turkey - 08-07-10
Last week VNG International welcomed its sister organisation the "Turkish Union of Municipalities" to study the Dutch practice of local government training and curriculum development. The Union of Municipalities of Turkey (UMT) is in the process of establishing a training institute and has the ambition to become the number 1 institute in Turkey in the field of local government training. Capacity and institution building of local government is one of the priorities in Turkey in the framework of local government reform.
The delegation consisted of the Secretary General of UMT, a member of the External Relations Commission of UMT and the director and staff of the recently established Training and Human Resources Department, a total of 8 representatives of UMT.
During the 2,5 days visit different aspects of training were touched upon, such as the more thematic focused trainings of the Academy for Public Administration (Bestuursacademie Nederland) or the more practice oriented trainings of the Institute for Public Administration (ROI). VNG’s "Actie programma Lokaal bestuur" showed a mixture and the "Quick Scan Local Government" is regarded as a very useful tool in the near future to self-evaluate the municipal practice of cooperation in Turkey. Curricula development and selection of trainers was discussed with The Hague Academy of Local Governance which organises practice-oriented training courses for local government representatives from abroad. Together with VNG’s quality institute KING opportunities for a future benchmarking model in Turkey were discussed.
The visual attractiveness of training materials, communication with trainers, the process of evaluation and feedback was noticed by the delegation. Although trainings are being evaluated in Turkey, this will require much more attention and UMT wishes to realise improvement of trainings through evaluation and feedback forms.
Comparing UMT with VNG, the Turkish colleagues concluded that there is still room to expand in the near future given UMT’s limited number of 50 staff members compared to VNG’s 300 staff members, while Turkey has 2.948 municipalities against 430 Dutch municipalities. However, UMT admitted that Dutch municipalities have a greater number of tasks and responsibilities.
VNG International cooperates since 2003 with the Union of Municipalities of Turkey. The visit was concluded with the agreement to have young Turkish civil servants to participate in the training programme of The Hague Academy for Local Governance.