CONCEPT NOTE. Workshop 2: Making Institutions Inclusive and Ensuring Participation in Decision-making. Friday, 22 nd June 2018

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1 CONCEPT NOTE Workshop 2: Making Institutions Inclusive and Ensuring Participation in Decision-making Friday, 22 nd June

2 Language: Conducted in English and French. The United Nations Public Service Award (UNPSA) is a prestigious international recognition of excellence in public service. It promotes and rewards innovation and excellence in public services for realizing the SDGs and the principle to leave no one behind, which is at the core of the 2030 Agenda. Through an annual competition, the UNPSA promotes the role, professionalism and visibility of public service. It was launched in 2003 and since then it has encouraged exemplary public service and recognized that democracy and successful governance are built on a competent civil service. The Awards are usually handed out on 23 June, day designated by the General Assembly as the United Nations Public Service Day to celebrate the value and virtue of public service to the community (A/RES/57/277). The General Assembly, in its resolution 57/277, encourages Member States to organize special events on that Day to highlight the contribution of public service in the development process. The 2018 UNPSA are given to those public institutions that have distinguished themselves in one of the following categories: 1. Reaching the poorest and most vulnerable through inclusive services and partnerships; 2. Making institutions inclusive and ensuring participation in decision-making; 3. Promoting gender responsive public services to achieve the SDGs Improvements in the delivery of public services contribute greatly to good governance for the achievement of sustainable development goals. The UNPSA Program inspires public servants all over the world to work towards perfecting their approaches, methodologies, practices, systems and processes, in the delivery of public services. I. Focus of the workshop: The 2030 Agenda in its Goal 16 recognizes the need to promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels. Public service institutions are paramount to the development process especially since they formulate, implement, monitor and evaluate policies, strategies and plans for the delivery of critical public services such as health, education, agricultural, environment protection, disaster prevention etc. All these critical public services are at the core of reducing poverty. Commitment to leaving no one behind in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda makes participatory and inclusive public institutions very critical. Governments all over the world must be engaged in efforts of making their public service institutions more effective, open, participatory and inclusive. This means that public service institutions should be open, participatory and inclusive. This implies that decisions are taken on the basis of participatory and inclusive initiatives which engage and empower citizens and stakeholders. Indeed, the 2030 Agenda calls for a whole-of-society approach that involves the 1

3 stakeholders with an inclusive and participatory process, guaranteeing ownership at all levels. Governments must therefore provide an enabling environment where formal and informal mechanisms for inclusion and participation are available. In addition, there is need for adopting institutions in the public service which are transparent and open as a prerequisite for providing better services to citizens leaving no one behind. Being open will guarantee availability of information and data for a sound and impartial public administration action. Moreover, data is one of the major challenges for the implementation of the Agenda Countries are making enormous efforts in terms of resources and capacities to map and provide data for the global framework. Public service institutions must catch the challenge of being more open, participatory and inclusive in this transformational change, and also being more accountable to the public by ensuring effective and transparent mechanisms for citizens and access to public services for all. II. Objective: The workshop aims to provide concrete experiences on how national or local governments and public institutions responsible for overseeing or delivering public services have strengthened their capacities to (i) engage people in preparing and implementing decisions, especially the poor and vulnerable people (ii) to fight discrimination and promote equality; (iii) clearly support inclusion, participation and engagement of all people and (iv) enhance responsiveness of government to the demands and needs of citizens and ensures the inclusion of the views of concerned sections of the community in public affairs. The workshop will aim to identify lessons learned and their implications for further actions. III. Structure: The workshop will be an interactive exercise that will move from theory to practice by sharing the creative and innovative results of the UNPSA winning cases on making institutions inclusive and ensuring participation in decision-making. The workshop will also provide a forum for an exchange of national and local experiences on the theme and discussing the capacity of governments to deliver innovative practices that enhances the formal and informal participation of all individuals and groups in measures related to public services and other aspects impacting their lives. Participants are expected to be government officials, policymakers, public governance experts, practitioners, civil society leaders, academics, and media. Guiding questions: 1. What inclusive political processes can help create more responsive and equitable public services that are better suited to diverse needs? 2. What kind of mechanisms can promote a professional, merit based and well equipped civil service to ensure continuous and consistent institutional performance for an effective public services delivery? 2

4 3. What processes and/or institutional mechanisms can enable governments policy makers and public officials to better interact with the public, and allow people, for instance, to participate in and influence policy-making? 4. What are the main recommendations on ways to accelerate progress in making institutions inclusive and ensuring participation in decision-making? IV. Organization: This workshop, co-organised by UNDESA and UNDP Morocco, will be composed of a general interactive session, a world cafe and a partnership corner. The general interactive session will revolve on the UNPSA awarded country experiences that will then lead to an interactive and in-depth discussion of the topic. The workshop will then break into small groups for a more structured conversational process for knowledge sharing in which participants will discuss the topic at several tables. Finally, the partnership corners will give participants the opportunity to establish direct, on-the-ground-cooperation between governments from around the world. V. Contact Person/s: UNDESA: Ms. Stefania Senese Governance and Public Administration Officer Division for Public Institutions and Digital Government (DPIDG) UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) senese@un.org Mr. Said Maalouf Programme Management Assistant Division for Public Institutions and Digital Government (DPIDG) UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) maaloufs@un.org UNDP: Ms. Chafika Affaq Project Manager UN Development Programme 3

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