Results of the support of the European Union to the improvement of the system of professional development in public administration

The project "Support to the National Academy for Public Administration in Professional Development of Public Administration", funded by the European Union, has significantly contributed to the establishment of a more efficient, inclusive, and responsible public administration in Serbia.

This project provided support to NAPA in improving the training program, through technical assistance for:

• conducting training needs analysis to assess the real needs of employees in the public sector, which resulted in the development of training needs analysis documents for 2020 and 2021;
• revision of existing programs according to identified needs and priorities, where the focus was on the analysis of programs and preparation of recommendations related to simplification and unification of training, the introduction of higher-level training, improvement of certain elements of training programs (such as names, reasons for training, goals and training outcomes, etc.), linking training with the competence framework, improving the process of preparation and adoption of training programs, as well as the revision of training programs for certain thematic areas (e.g., International Development Aid and EU Funds Management, Human Resources Management, etc..), as well as the preparation of the Vocational Training Program in state administration bodies, etc.).Also, a methodology for incorporating horizontal issues into training programs has been prepared and two priority horizontal themes (anti-discrimination and cooperation with civil society) have been incorporated into training programs for 2021.
• development of priority online courses, where the Conceptual Framework for e-learning development was prepared with guidelines for all phases of development of this training format and the development of eight online training was financed (ABC of the European Union; Stabilisation and Association Agreement; Constitutional regulation; Public policy; Legislative process - basic training, An Introduction to the EU Cohesion Policy, Few steps to improved physical health at work, Towards more efficient administration and better public services with the national infrastructure of geospatial data). All these trainings were prepared in cooperation with accredited trainers hired by NAPA, while the project financed the development of scripts, video recording, integration of video production of recorded materials and post-production (additional animations, subtitling, and general post-production). On the Academy's LMS platform for online learning, access to civil servants and employees in local self-government units has already been provided for all the trainings.

In the last two months of project implementation (implementation period is June 2019 - December 2020), the focus was on the evaluation of developed online trainings in order to assess the contribution of these trainings to the improvement of participants' competencies and to draw conclusions relevant to the development of new online courses.