Innovations are simple solutions that make a big difference

Organized for the IVth time in Chisinau, this years’ edition of the Innovation in Governance Forum was framed in the context: “Making Progress in achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)”. For the first time, the event had a regional format, bringing together around 200 local and international public sector specialists from 20 countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Its aim was to discuss new options for involving citizens in the policy-making process and improving public services.

According to Rastislav Vrbensky, Deputy Director of UNDP in Europe and Central Asia, Moldova is one of the leaders in implementing the Sustainable Development Goals, process launched two years ago, especially in terms of adjusting them to the national context.

“For the United Nations Development Programme, innovations mean perfect quality, ability to generate solutions and continuous improvement. Speaking about innovations, we are primarily considering public services: how can we deliver them to meet citizens’ expectations? The Government of the Republic of Moldova, with support of the UN and other partners, has begun implementing the Global Goals, in total 17, with 106 national targets. Therefore, the Republic of Moldova started working to achieve these goals and developed indicators to measure the results achieved.”

The participants shared their experiences and explored different innovative tools and methodologies to meet challenges that the public sector is currently facing, from both service providers — public institutions, and service users — citizens perspectives.

Experts from Great Britain, Armenia, Ukraine, Belarus, Turkey, Singapore, Malaysia, Albania, Serbia etc. shared their experience on best practices successfully applied in their countries. Vasant Chari, Senior Policy Advisor, Policy Lab, UK, mentioned that experimental approach is an innovative public policy-making tool with a lot of benefits to both governments and citizens.

“Before implementing a policy at national level, it needs to be tested on a small scale. For example, we encourage public servants to go in the field, to present themselves as experimenters of our Laboratory, and to see with their own eyes what reaction — positive or negative — people have to the ideas they want to implement. Only through a rigorous analysis of these data can we decide whether or not public policies can be actually implemented”, Vasant Chari added.

The Government of the Republic of Moldova founded the Public Services Agency, an institution designed to coordinate the reform process and to ensure an efficient and accessible public services’ delivery — the “one-stop shop” principle being applied to 5 institutions that are currently part of the Agency. Moreover, according to Iurie Ciocan, Director of the Implementation Centre for Reforms, the Law on Government adopted this year is the key innovation element that will contribute to increasing the performance of the public sector.

“The new law is developed in a modern language, with human-centered objectives and, most importantly, clearly defines the principles of government collaboration with other state powers and public bodies and institutions that are on the same horizon as the Government. We will create all the necessary conditions for Reform implementation from central to local level“, said Iurie Ciocan.

Through innovative methods and approaches applied in the decision-making process, citizens’ dissatisfaction can be transformed into ideas generator. This is, in fact, the purpose of the innovations labs acting to assist governments and supported by development partners, to call citizens to sketch and come up with proposals to modernize services in the way they would like to be provided.

For instance, the Moldova Social Innovations Laboratory (MiLab, a joint project of UNDP Moldova and State Chancellery) is a pioneer in applying such innovative methodologies as user-centered design, use of alternative data sources and citizens’ generated data. These methodologies not only improved the quality of public services delivery, but also increased citizens’ trust by direct involvement into decision-making process.

The Innovations in Governance Regional Forum took place on November 14–16, 2017 and was organized by MiLab, with support of the UNDP and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women in Moldova, in partnership with the State Chancellery.