Department of Public Administration and Public Service National Academy for Public Administration under the President of Ukraine

In assessing the results of the administrative reform in Ukraine, it is also planned to use an integral indicator, such as the quality of public administration, assessed by external experts. Summarizing, we can draw some significant conclusions. Firstly, the specific features of executive bodies, as public service providers, determine the diversity of approaches to assessing the quality of their activities - public administration. The selection of assessment criteria, data sources and the method of their aggregation depends on the objectives of the assessment and management tasks. Such tasks may include:

- assessment and monitoring of the public administration bodies' activity in the framework of budgeting according to the results;

- rating of executive bodies by the efficiency and effectiveness indicators for the purpose of comparative analysis and development of recommendations to improve the processes and results of activities;

- benchmarking and analysis of the best practices in executive bodies;

- rating of subnational or national systems of executive bodies by the quality of public administration to adopt managerial decisions in line with the policy pursued by national governments or international organizations.

Among the managerial tasks that can be solved by analyzing the public administration quality, especially outstanding is assessing the effectiveness of changes that are made in the executive bodies (implementing new management tools). Based on the modern concept of “good public management”, it is possible to identify the main groups of parameters for the public administration quality, which have to be taken into account at assessing the activities of executive bodies: improvement of the quality of public services; reduction in the unit cost of the services delivered; enhancing the efficiency; transparency and accountability of public authorities; the responsiveness of the public authorities to newly emerging needs (changing expectations).

Thus, the search for a universal conceptual approach to assessment continues, which would allow assessing and analyzing the activities of public administration bodies in terms of their ability and progress in achieving the goal of maximizing public welfare. Such an approach to assessment is needed that would allow to consider different quality indicators of public administration integrally, that would be based on the principles of “good public administration” and focused, first of all, on external public service consumers' evaluation of the executive bodies' activities. The concept of public value can underlie such an integrated approach to assessing the activities of public administration bodies.

2.3 Relating the peculiarities to the post conflict situation

The time for ending the Ukraine-Russia confrontation depends directly on how we see our post-conflict future and how it is seen by our opponents. Perhaps, here the most acute issue is the one of ethical and legal responsibility for the crimes committed by aggressor and its satellites and human rights violations. S. Huntington called it “the problem of executors” [21]. This category of people already has nothing to lose, they will fight to the end, turning their environment into hostages. Will justice take place? Will justice be restored? Will the guilty be punished? We do not know the unambiguous answer yet, thereby we call to the experience of those peoples and states that came through such trials in the past.

According to many experts, there are certain specific features of the post-conflict situation in Ukraine. Firstly, it is necessary to step up efforts in training highly skilled specialists. Each reform requires a professionally trained staff. The dynamics and contradictory reforms require the transformation of the state administration and local self-government system, making professional the civil service and service in the local self-government authorities, which is connected with the competence of civil servants and local self-government officials (public servants). The competence of public servants under complication of social processes has to increase. The state personnel policy has to be aimed at creating conditions regarding training, retraining, advanced training and assessment of professional competencies during the civil servants' professional activity.

This context gives raise to the task of developing a system of professional training for public servants with the simultaneous assessment of their qualifications and the level of professionalism in the “Public Management and Administration”. The methodological basis for solving this task has to be a series of legislative acts, in particular, the Strategy of Public Administration Reform in Ukraine for 2016-2020, approved by the Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine as of 24 June 2016 No. 474-r¹; the Strategy for Reforming the Civil Service and Service in Local Self-Government Bodies in Ukraine until 2017, approved by the Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine as of 18 Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine “Some Issues of Public Administration”. (2016, June).

March 2015 No. 227¹; the Concept of Reforming the System of Vocational Training of Civil Servants, Heads of Local State Administrations, Their First Deputies and Deputy Heads, Local Self-Government Officials and Local Council Deputies, approved by the Decree of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine as of 01 December 2017 No. 974-rResolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine “About the consolidated provision about the State service of Ukraine and the State service of Ukraine”. (2016, March). Decree of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine “About the concept of reforming the system of professional education of state services, heads of state administrators, first defenders and defenders, posadovs of the citizens of the state self-government and deputies of citizens”. (2017, December). , that contain: the goal-setting in transforming the civil service; defining the directions of the state policy and regulatory framework of civil servants' professional training; setting professional qualification requirements for public administration personnel, their training and advanced training; definition of the content of education, development of educational programs.

Thus, the institutionalization of public servants' professional development in public management and administration has to include:

- development and implementation of a sectoral qualifications' framework, considering the National Qualifications Framework;

- development of civil service professional standards and service in local selfgovernment authorities based on a competent approach with the participation of interested parties and their approval;

- development and implementation of standards in the specialty 281 Public Administration and Management of the area 28 Public Administration and Management and the educational standard for the training of public servants;

- introduction of a nation-wide qualification examination for persons, who receive higher education in the specialty Public Administration and Management of the area Public Management and Administration;

- development and adoption of educational-professional and research-educational programs of the specialty Public Administration and Management of innovative nature;

- advanced training in the programs for specialized short-term training courses, perpetual and short-term thematic seminars, trainings, workshops on urgent issues of social development.

Secondly, at decentralization, the transfer of powers from the center to the regions would mean the transformation of the power vertical where most issues were resolved by the transfer and execution of orders which come from the top to bottom, and the middle- and low-ranking officials remained a usual performer.

Thirdly, Ukraine is doomed to reform the administrative-territorial system. So far, all the attempts to carry out the administrative-territorial reform were unsuccessful and did not go beyond the concepts that are very controversial in their nature. On 05 February2015, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine passed the Law “On Voluntary Association of Territorial CommunitiesLaw of Ukraine “On Voluntary Association of Territorial Communities”. (2015, February). ”. The purpose of this act is to consolidate territorial communities through the voluntary association, which should eventually lead to an increase in their capacity and efficiency. However, a detailed analysis of this act shows its significant defects, the main of which is the discrepancy of its norms with the current Constitutional provisions and acts. Moreover, the implementation of the act in practice can lead to unpredictable social consequences, which is opposite to the declared goal, as the experts expressly say. For example, the conclusions of the Main Scientific and Expert Department of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine indicate: “Practical implementation of the draft act in case it is passed in the proposed version is unlikely to allow forming self-sufficient territorial communities that would have the appropriate material, financial resources and public amenities necessary for the effective performance of bodies' tasks and functions or to improve the quality of delivering administrative, social, public services to the communities, as stated in the explanatory note.

It is obvious that forming the united territorial communities, the average number of which will be 9 thousand people, who will live in 16 settlements on average, the expected average area of which will be approximately 400 sqr km, and the distance from the administrative center of a united territorial community to the most remote settlement of such a community is determined in view of the availability of basic public services (administrative, social and others) delivered on the territory of such a community (arrival time for an ambulance in urgent cases and a fire-fighting team must not exceed 30 minutes), is doubtful in terms of the possibility of practical implementation, and will lead to the alienation of the citizens not only from the authorities, but also from the relevant administrative and other services, thereby such consolidation of territorial communities seems excessive and does not contain a proper justification”. Besides, the proposed voluntary association of territorial communities does not consider the special features of separate territories, for example, the southern districts of Odessa region, where national minorities are concentrated.

Fourthly, upon signing the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, Kyiv undertook several commitments that concern not only the economic regime liberalization, but also the bringing of domestic legislation in line with European norms. This concerns the introduction of EU regulations. Therefore today, not only knowledge of domestic legislation becomes relevant for a civil servant, but also the fundamentals of the EU legislation and European experience in public administration [22; 23].

Fifthly, decentralization cannot replace effective state regional policy, it is only an essential prerequisite for its implementation. On 05 February 2015, the Law “On the Principles of State Regional PolicyLaw of Ukraine “On the Principles of State Regional Policy”. (2015, February).” was passed, but like the Strategy for Civil Service Reform, it is mainly declarative. Its key disadvantage is the lack of effective mechanisms for simulating the development of regions. And of course, the key issue to be solved as part of the reform is the fight against corruption. Despite all the declarations of power holders, the demonstrative dismissals of certain corrupt officials, corruption remains an incurable disease both of the state and the society. In the Global Competitiveness Report of 2014, Ukraine ranked 130th among 144 countries by state institutions quality indicator, and the 142th place among 175 countries by the Corruption Perceptions Index.

First of all, the factors that cause corruption and create a nutrient medium for it remain unchanged. Moreover, with the deepening economic crisis and political instability, unemployment growth, some of them are only aggravated. The main ones are:

- poverty of majority of the population, the excessive stratification of the society to 5 per cent very rich and the rest, who barely make ends meet. Today, a small middle- class stratum is under considerable pressure. Along with this, the concept of labor as a source of well-being is diminished which creates a corresponding atmosphere in the society;

- controversial attitude of society towards such a phenomenon as corruption. On the one hand, in the society there is a rejection and condemnation of corruption and calls for solving this problem in a non-legal way, on the other hand, there is an attempt to solve the arising problems and to evade the requirements of the law by using corruptive mechanisms;

- low quality of legislation, which creates legal conflicts and allows ambiguous interpretations, regulation of a large number of issues by subordinate legislation;

- frequent change in the government machinery for political reasons, “quotas principle” at taking up posts, political corruption and, as a result, ordinary corruption;

- excessive regulation of entrepreneurial activity, imperfect tax system, the possibility to gain profit, mainly by close approximation to authorities;

- ineffective law enforcement and judicial system;

- inconsistency between the remuneration level of persons authorized to perform state or local self-government functions, and the scope of their authority.

It is impossible to overcome these reasons in a short period of time, although in society there is demand for “quick” solutions. One example of this may be the Law “On Cleansing of PowerLaw of Ukraine “On Cleansing of Power”. (2014, September). ”, which in fact not only did not meet the its adoption initiators' expectations, but also caused obvious damage. Unfortunately, in public opinion a generalized image of an official has been created, who bears all negative assessment of the government's actions. At the same time, it is forgotten that a civil servant is the same profession as the others, which does not only require professionalism, but is also limited by certain legal frameworks.

Nowadays, under conditions of the socio-economic and political turbulence caused both by internal and external factors, the public administration institute of Ukraine faces a wide range of problems, including such as the negative balance of the society's trust, the lack of balance of centralization and decentralization of the state administration system, bad communication both within the power structures and between the state and society, shortage of qualified personnel, low quality of administrative services and insufficient level of moral and ethical consciousness of civil servants. At the paradigm level, the main task of managerial reforms in Ukraine can be formulated as a transition from direct control of the social activity subjects to control of the factors systemically important for this activity. In other words, in the center of democratic governance there is an informal control over those factors of social environment that determine the behavior, motivation, orientation of the activities of certain subjects of political and administrative activity, which is determined by the concepts of social modernization and information revolution. The analysis of the latter allows for the conclusion that in general the social modernization process is considered as the acquisition of new management opportunities by the Ukrainian society, as the optimization of the ways of social functioning, where the main role is assigned to the managerial factor. In the context of Ukrainian modernization reforms, the search and formation of an effective public administration model in Ukraine has not been completed yet.

Conclusions

An important factor in the civil service reform implementation is the optimization of political and administrative interaction, the delineation of political and administrative levels, and building effective interaction between all subjects of the management process. It is reasonable to choose the frequency of its vacancy filling with the change of a minister at the central level and the head of the administration at the regional level as a sign of political engagement of a certain post. Although such a sensitivity index cannot be recognized as absolute, it indicates quite clearly to what extent this post is actually biased in this period in power-political competitions and how making the highest priority political decisions a reality depends on it. An important point is also that the delineation line of political and administrative functions does not coincide in the legal and factual aspects.

The civil service reform is aimed at solving the problems facing the public administration system, namely:

- insufficient level of state policy quality in various spheres, legislative and regulatory framework (policy formation and drafting of legislative acts based on detailed analysis, public participation, integrity and consistency of actions and decisions of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine as a whole);

- lack of highly-qualified personnel at civil service positions that are important for developing and implementing national reforms and are capable of meeting the challenges of reforming in various sectors;

- high level of corruption in the civil service system, which obstructs the efficiency and effectiveness of public administration; gender imbalance;

- insufficient level of human resources management in ministries and other central executive bodies, lack of automated human resources management system.

The study of the Law of Ukraine “On Civil ServiceLaw of Ukraine “On Civil Service”. (2015, December).” as of 10 December 2015 identified a number of innovations aimed at improving the performance and ensuring the quality of civil service, namely: separation of administrative and political positions; clarification of the legal status of a civil servant; separation of civil service from political activity; establishing an exhaustive list of persons, who are not subject to the civil service legislation; introduction of a new approach to the classification of civil servants' positions; a competency-based approach to the selection of candidates for the civil service; defining legislatively common approaches to entry, performance and separation from civil service; improving professional skills and professional training of civil servants, their labor remuneration, bonus payment and encouraging, as well as disciplinary responsibility. Reforming the civil service legislation has become the most important step towards the full public administration reform. Despite the imperfection of the newly passed legislation, as evidenced by the constant changes to it, nevertheless it should be noted that the direction in which legislators and reformers are working is right.

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