Local Government & Public Service Reform Initiative

The Local Government & Public Service Reform Initiative promotes open society values by supporting democratic and effective national and subnational governance, and advancing policy analysis as a tool for decision making in public affairs. The initiative collaborates with civil society partners to support local and regional reform by monitoring and benchmarking government performance as well as providing analytical and technical support to governments.

Through its activities, the initiative aims to institutionalize practices to ensure that governments are accountable to their citizens, transparent in how they operate, willing to engage with and respond to civil society, and have the organizational capacity to implement programs effectively and efficiently.

The initiative has worked primarily in the transition countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, but is also forming partnerships with OSI programs and external institutions to implement programs in Asia and Latin America.

As part of its efforts to promote reform, the initiative has focused on policy advocacy training programs to help civil society and government leaders undertake evidence-based analyses and draft policy papers. Trainings are conducted in all the regions where OSI works and have been recently expanded to West  Africa.

The initiative has also worked with the Council of Europe to advance political decentralization in Southeastern Europe, helped civil society groups in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Slovakia access EU structural funds to develop programs for Roma inclusion, implemented public administration reform in Central Asia, and helped reform civil servant training curricula in Indonesia.

The Local Government & Public Service Reform Initiative maintains its own separate website at http://lgi.osi.hu.