February 27, representatives of donor organizations, projects and programs dealing with support of decentralization in Ukraine, discussed future plans for the reform implementation with representatives of legislative and executive authorities. 

The key topic of the meeting was to coordinate joint activities of donor projects and public institutions, as well as to monitor the results of implementation of the decentralization reform. 

During the Coordination session, Christian Disler, SDC representative, presented the structure of the Council of donors and Working groups. In particular, the activities of this institution are aimed at segmenting the spheres of influence of donor organisations and at providing a system of communication between them that will prevent duplication of each other’s activities and will increase the efficiency of their interaction. 

Additionally, Benedikt Herrmann, Officer of EU Delegation to Ukraine, and Olena Krylova, Swiss expert, presented the donor activity monitoring tool called “Logical framework of the results of implementing the decentralization reform in Ukraine”. 

After the introductory part, the participants of the meeting had an opportunity to continue their active work by engaging in working groups according to sectoral areas, covering the following aspects of the reform implementation: 

• administrative-territorial reform and legislative support for decentralization; 

• finance and budgeting of local self-governments;

• the issue of local democracy; 

• problems of regional and local development; 

• provision of services (housing and communal services, administrative services, education, health care service); 

• communication, education systems and knowledge management. 

Later on, the representatives of each working group had an opportunity to present the groundwork accomplished by each WG. Gennadiy Zubko, Vice Prime Minister, and Vyacheslav Nehoda, First Deputy Minister, joined the discussion of these developments and summing up of the event.