How to train tens of thousands of officials?

In 2019, there are plans to launch an e-learning platform for officials of the restructured local governments in Ukraine, which will be used to train more than 10,000 civil servants. The e-Learning Platform has been designed by the e-Governance Academy in cooperation with BCS Koolitus, Estonia’s leading ICT sector training and project management company.

 Several important reforms involving all of society and concerning various state agencies are being conducted in Ukraine. One of them is the administrative reform, as a result of which the yet-to-be-formed new local governments will be assigned additional functions they have never had to deal with before.

These include tasks connected with the financial income base of local governments, social services, and tasks that concern several important registry operations, which until now have been the responsibility of the central government.

As far as is known, many of these services are planned to be implemented as e-services, but this does not mean that local government employees should not be familiar with these services. Therefore, tens of thousands of public service employees need to acquire new knowledge, skills, and competencies in the coming years. “Using an e-Learning Platform is the only solution in such a large country, and for teaching so many new skills and competencies so extensively,” admitted Linnar Viik, who is developing the e-Learning Platform.

He said that at present, the e-Governance Academy and BCS Koolitus were drafting an overview of the state of e-learning in Ukraine and the training needs of the local governments in connection with the reform. “If we have an overview of the current state and know the needs, our understanding of the expectations for the e-Learning Platform will become clearer. Then, we will compile the technical description of the e-Learning Platform, which will also include the didactics of e-learning and the design of study modules,” Viik explained. He added that, at the same time, they would also specify the nature, coordination, and functions of the organisation that would conduct e-learning in the future, and make proposals for activities until 2020. This will ensure that the organisation that is to be formed will implement the plans that have been put on paper.

The draft of the e-Learning Platform will be developed within U-LEAD programme with the support of GIZ, the German development cooperation organisation that supports sustainable development and education activities all over the world.