Canada supports public sector reform (10/13/96)

Canada supports public sector reform

by Christopher Guly

OTTAWA - Canada's minister responsible for the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), Pierre Pettigrew, recently unveiled new Canadian initiatives to support new academic programs and training to strengthen public sector reform in Ukraine.

The two-and-a-half-year, $2.5 million CIDA program will support the policy-making and implementation, management and leadership roles of the Ukrainian Academy of Public Administration and the Ukrainian government. It will facilitate a master's program in public administration, with courses targeted to reform, and will subsidize Canadian internships for MPA students.

Resource libraries and language-training centers also will be established in the academy's four regional branches, and executive training programs for women will be expanded. The Ottawa-based Canadian Bureau for International Education (CBIE) will manage the project, drawing resources from such Canadian partners as the Public Service Commission of Canada; Ottawa's Carleton, British Columbia's Victoria, Saskatoon's Saskatchewan and Toronto's Ryerson Polytechnic universities; the Ecole Nationale d'Administration Publique du Quebec; Partners in Training Canada; and the Ontario Municipal Management Institute.

This latest CBIE initiative in Ukraine follows a three-year, $4.7 million CIDA-funded and CBIE-managed program in which thousands of Ukrainians were trained at the Canadian-sponsored Institute of Public Administration and Local Government, run by Edmonton's Bohdan Krawchenko and based in Kyiv. Between 1993 and 1996, 100 students attended the institute's one-year MPA certification program.