Round Table "Sustained development of municipalities and local self-government: modern interaction facilities between experts and practitioners"
On June 29, 2010, a Round Table on the topic "Sustained development of municipalities and local self-government: modern interaction facilities between experts and practitioners" was held, attended by N.I. Mironova, the Staff Member of the Laboratory for Municipalities Development.
The round table was organized by the Institute of Contemporary Development and the Foundation for the "Sustainable Development", supported by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in Russia. The participants discussed the establishment in Russia of a new network of the targeted community of experts and practitioners in the field of local self-government.
In the framework of technology of targeted communities, developed within UNDP back in 2005, in India, there where so far created 11 communities, which are involved in a wide range of issues related to the development of policy, programs and objectives.The basis of this technology is the formation of a spatially distributed network of specialists in a particular subject area, and consumers of their expertise – those individuals whose activities are required to periodical search for relevant experience, solutions to the problems or involvement of knowledge and consulting services in the relevant fields. This form of information exchange combines the properties of an electronic periodical, scientific workshop and a social network. Currently, in Russia the topical associations "Issues of Large Dams" and "Energy Efficiency and Conservation" association are starting to function.
The UNDP proposal for a new topical community creation with the provisional name "Municipality" was supported by the Russian Scientific Center of State and Municipal Administration (Director – S.N. Yurkova) and the Foundation for Sustainable Development (Chairman of the Board of Directors – V.I. Danilov-Danilyan) .
The Roundtable participants supported the idea of creating a targeted community and started to make proposals for its specific functioning. By September 2010 it is planned to get the first working version of the powerful information portal, which will include the individual blocks of municipal agencies’ guidelines, extracts from the legislation, accumulated data in the form of a library and consultations, and most importantly - the best practices of municipal management.