The First Vice Prime Minister – Minister of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine addressed oblast state administrations in an official letter asking them to promote establishment of Administrative Service Centres in local self-government bodies (including amalgamated hromadas) in rayon centres (to actually create joint ASCs with local self-government bodies) and organise delivery of administrative service of executive bodies (including state administrations) through such ASCs.

U-LEAD with Europe Programme’s experts in their work with hromadas have repeatedly emphasised that in the long run conducting of decentralisation and administrative-territorial reform, powers to organise most administrative services, including those of the rayon state administrations, through the ASCs will belong to local governments.

In settlements, which are the administrative centres of rayons, it is impractical to create and maintain two ASCs at once – that of a local self-government body and that of a rayon state administration. At the same time, local governments have greater institutional and administrative capacity and flexibility to form ASC’s staff and structure, and to motivate the ASC personnel. The greater motivation of local self-government bodies to provide better quality administrative services on their own (since local heads and deputies are electoral positions) is also important.

Once again, we want to emphasise the propriety of strategic decisions of the heads of rayon state administrations, who in recent years have formed joint ASCs with local self-government bodies, including by transferring the ASC staff of rayon state administrations to the structure of the local self-government’s ASC, and taking into account the need for rational use of existing ASC infrastructure.

The U-LEAD experts' explanation on how to establish a joint (city-rayon / settlement-rayon) ASC can be found via the link (in Ukrainian).

Letter from the First Vice Prime Minister – Minister of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine is available by the link.

The full version is available in Ukrainian – please click HERE