At a meeting that took place on July 30–August 3 this year, LGI, the United Nations Development Programme, and the World Bank Institute launched a two-year program to develop policy proposals and action plans for local government reform in Central Asia. The project, designed under the Fiscal Decentralization Initiative, a joint undertaking of the LGI, the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank Institute, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Council of Europe, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Danish Ministry of Interior, and the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with the secretariat based in the LGI, started with an initial training and brainstorming workshop in Bratislava.

The main objective of the project, which combines training and policy research, is to help build local expertise to design intergovernmental relations and develop local government capacities in the four Central Asian countries: Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. During the course of the project the 26 participants—high-ranking public administrators and independent nongovernmental experts—will work in four separate country groups to prepare policy proposals and action plans for improving local governance in their countries. Advisors from the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakia will assist individual groups by providing feedback and expertise through an online network. The groups will also take part in regular workshops that will be organized in Central Asia.

The Bratislava workshop was divided into two parts. During the first part the participants familiarized themselves with the program, met their advisors from Central Europe, and took part in two-and-a-half days of training. Delivered by experts from Croatia, the Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and the United States, the training focused on the legal framework for decentralization and on such fiscal issues as expenditure and revenue assignment, transparency, and accountability as preconditions for more efficient public administration. The training included interactive case studies on water, education, and local financial management, as well as overviews of the decentralization processes ongoing in the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakia.

During the second part of the workshop the participants had the floor. They were asked to prepare analyses of decentralization in their respective countries, working in their country teams. Following the presentations of individual country teams and moderated discussion, the participants agreed on the following four topics for their policy research and the follow-up workshops:

Each country team will prepare its own policy document on each of the topics. Each country team will also take the lead on one of the topics and prepare a wider regional policy document, summarizing the main points and policy recommendations presented in the individual country studies.

The first follow-up workshop where country teams presented and discussed studies dealing with the legal status and functions of local governments in the Central Asian countries took place at Issyk-Kul Lake, Kyrgyz Republic, on December 2–4.