Umeå – Central Turkey

Objectives of the partnership

The focus areas for the Umeå – Central Turkey partnership are taxes, charges, budgeting, financial follow-up and monitoring, as well as skills and leadership development. During the partner meetings there have also been discussions about how to inform and communicate with citizens.

The meetings have been directed to knowledge transfer and information about municipal issues in general in Sweden and Turkey and on several lectures and discussion about the focus areas.

The Turkish municipalities expressed early in the project that they would like to concentrate on one issue at each seminar. They need strategic programmes for recruiting and training of staff, competence development, and also for phase-out of personnel. They also need to develop ideas on how to handle economic long-term planning, budgeting and economic follow-up. According to law, every official institution in Turkey has to present a strategic plan for the next three years – including municipalities. The content of this project serve as one of the tools to facilitate that process.

The meetings during first half of 2008 were concentrated on different Human Resources Management (HRM) issues. This resulted in a programme for project activities with the following objectives and frame content:    

General objective:

Increasing the quality and capacity in HRM issues

Specific objectives:

1. Establishing a network between officials and experts in the municipalities for sharing good examples

2. Increasing the quality and efficiency of staff

3. Extending the intercultural learning between Turkey and Sweden

Expected results:

Well educated municipal staff prepared for an efficient and feasible HMR

Strengthen staff performance and work results (performing management, career paths, motivation, incentives, communication, working conditions and job-descriptions)

Increasing and deepening cultural understanding

Employees experienced to work in an international environment.

Activities:

Training courses, on-the-job training, case-studies, work-shops, study visits, presentations, cultural events.

Other cooperation

During autumn of 2008 The Umeå-Central Turkey partnership started another project, mainly financed by the European Union. The title is Swedish-Turkish networking in Participatory Budgeting (TUSEPART), and it aims at increasing the service quality, sharing good implementation methods and further develop the cooperation between the Turkish Municipalities and the City of Umeå. The project is approved with a budget of about 200 000 euro. Implementation started during autumn 2008.

Umeå and the municipality of Nilüfer are also working on an application for a gender equality project in which the inception phase is going to take place during October-December, 2009.