4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
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The PFI plays a creative and innovative role by:
• Promoting the importance of investing in Human Resources, as the main tool to achieve sustainable development,
• Enhancing professionalism within public services through PFM professionals’ knowledge capacity building and improvement of the management of human resources,
• Restoring the image of public services by improving the efficiency of civil servant skills (specialized and soft skills),
• Raising public awareness about the benefits of good governance through targeted communication tools (updated news, media and events),
• Contributing to building trust between citizens and the public authorities through the promotion of transparency and public efficiency incorporated in the training curricula,
• Targeting youth, women, and academic groups whose role is crucial to ensure the sustainability of the achievements made by the PFI (knowledge exchange and awareness sessions promoted by the PFI documentation centre).
Combining these several approaches makes this initiative unique in delivering successfully recognised inputs for governance improvement.
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5. Who implemented the initiative and what is the size of the population affected by this initiative?
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The need for a training center devoted to Public Finance Management (PFM) was formulated in 2005 by the Ministry of Finance. The initiative was implemented with the strong involvement of MoF general directorates. They provided professional technical teams to consolidate an internal pool of trainers and a training coordinators team. By the legal status, a board of directors was set in 2011 involving the MoF at highest level, the General Personnel Council (GPC), academia, business.
Improving PFM, from both revenues and expenditures side has the potential of affecting all the society. In practice, effects are appearing progressively. They result from better-trained staff in charge. The training of Customs officers contributes to improving the safety of the products on the market. Well-trained staff in charge of the Large Taxpayers’ Unit contributes to collecting taxes from major economic actors in a fair way. The professional capacity of staff in charge of public accounting contributes to sustainability of financial statements issuing. Moreover, training staff about the International Public Sector Accounting Standards increases the readiness of our country to implement such standards that provide transparency and accountability to the public.
These inputs are definitely needed, and PFI is a key actor to provide them. Taxpayers, citizens in need of public services, can find themselves in a situation of witnessing progresses. For the public at large, witnessing positive effects can only result from a combination of multi fold changes, training being one of the bricks.
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6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
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The initiative was launched as a co-financed project. The Palestinian government budget has been responsible from start with the financing of the building, the running costs (including the staff costs), and the current training delivery program through the training modules developed in-house or selected from outside providers. The total amount of Palestinian funding to date is of 3 M€. A French grant of 3.5M€ was provided to assist Palestine in creating the training center (2008-2014). This grant covered all development costs (including the equipment of the premises, transfer of know-how regarding assessment needs, training modules’ development, training of trainers).
The strategical approach for developing the capacity of the PFI aimed at combining (1) the benefits from the international community experience in best practices and (2) the ability to answer the technical knowhow and the human resource needs in the very peculiar context in which the Palestinian institutions are to deliver. Palestinian ownership of the project has been considered since the very early phase of designing its content.
Monitoring and evaluation has relied on two complementary bodies: the board of directors of the PFI, the steering committee and high level meetings between the Palestinian and French partners.
The strategy followed adapted to the issues that were emerging progressively and to the risks for achieving the aim. It incorporated following pursued achievements: change the way training was considered in order to make it a natural tool for achieving the missions given to each directorate; make all hierarchical levels playing their respective role for making the whole training process work; involve the best cadres as direct actors in designing the training tools in order to incorporate their knowledge of the best solutions to the worse difficulties, identify the international standards to be incorporated, end up with an in house built knowledge that reflects the real context of work and delivered by local staff, adapt to the national features the training approach.
In the peculiar Palestinian situation, the public administration has to reinforce its social legitimacy and capacity to interact along the rules implemented since Oslo. More than in any other context it is crucial to capacitate MoF staff with all the knowledge needed in order to demonstrate its ability to do well.
Ongoing developments shall be pursued to feed the training catalog in order to cover all PFM aspects. Also, the number of in-house trainers which is a milestone for the sustainability of a training process, shall be continuously increased. Inspired by the successes obtained with “mass training” for Customs’ officers, a strong front-loading in training all the staff is also on the agenda.
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7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
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The initiative was designed and implemented through a bilateral cooperation project between the Palestinian Ministry of Finance and the French technical cooperation Agency (Expertise France). Both administrations worked closely together to provide technical expertise and political guidance for the establishment of the PFI and the launching of its training activities.
From 2011, after the “Public Finance and Taxation Institute” also known as the “Palestinian Public Finance Institute (PFI)” was given its legal status, its board of directors, became a central component for managing the implementation of its activities. The composition of this board chaired by the Minister of Finance includes the main directorates of the MoF and a representative of the General Personnel Council, the Ministries of Planning, High Education, National Economy, a private sector and an academic representative.
By organising public or official events on PFM matters, the PFI welcomes several communities, inter alia, the media, the business sector, Palestinian public institutions, international community representatives and academia. This component of its activities is to be further developed along the present PFI three year strategy (2017-2019)
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8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
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The initiative contributes directly to SDG16 “Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels” and is instrumental for the decisive SDG17 which is dealing with means of implementation of the 2030 Agenda.
By contributing to the strengthening of Public Finances, and therefore reinforcing the Palestinian institutions’ capacity to deliver public services and support economic growth, the initiative addresses de facto many others SDGs.
On the revenue side, it delivers knowledge inputs in order to strengthen domestic resource mobilization (SDG17). On the expenditure side, knowledge gained through training contributes indirectly to funding aimed at poverty eradication, health, education and gender equality (SDG1, SDG3, SDG 4, SDG5), as well as employment and economic and industrial growth (SDG8, SDG9). All in all, with outputs conducive to improve governance and transparency, to enhance public trust in institutions, the initiative largely contributes to the components of SDG16.
The initiative was effective by providing relevant inputs that contribute to the quality of PFM, where it:
1. Established a state‐of‐the‐art training center for Fiscal and Economic issues,
2. Provide feasible and relevant training which corresponds to the improvement of the Public Finance Management, that leads to improve the quality of civil service in this field,
3. Contribute to the foundations for sustainable human resources capacity-building system at Palestinian Ministry of Finance including the training of in-house trainers in the different fields of responsibility of the Ministry of Finance and the improvement of hierarchical capacities of managers,
4. Offers a documentation center aimed at helping the public (including academia, media, business, organised civil society, public at large) to access reliable and updated information,
5. Gather all PFM stakeholders, including the international community, providing a shared platform for coordinating capacity building efforts and delivery.
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9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
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A major challenge is to convince the public institutions’ leadership on the importance of investing in a long-term perspective on topics related to human resource development. Spontaneously, priority is usually given to short-term challenges, not always justified by a strong outcome aim.
Conversely, the PFI approach has insisted on the benefits to expect from a gradually accumulated common culture of high quality knowledge within the public institutions that is progressively reflected in attitudes, mentalities, and sense of belonging.
The understanding and support of the leadership is a key issue because when lacking, investing in people and their training, will neither be supported at technical level nor covered financially.
This obstacle has been mostly overcome to date through the development of solid communication canals to share arguments and the accumulated successes that can inspire beyond those already on board. Also, the feedback coming from in-house trainers and from trainees provides powerful support to the PFI approach.
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