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PEM PAL Community Facilitator (in Slovenia)

ECA Mission, Principles and Vision

To meet demands in a rapidly changing Region, the World Bank partners with governments and other stakeholders to:

• Promote growth and create jobs
• Encourage social inclusion and fight poverty
• Foster good governance, and
• Address global needs

The ECA Region offers customized knowledge and innovative financial products to address these challenges in a timely manner.  

Our Guiding Principles

• Client centered
• Working in partnership
• Accountable for quality results
• Dedicated to financial integrity and cost-effectiveness
• Inspired and innovative
 
Our Core Values

• Personal honesty, integrity, commitment
• Working together in teams - with openness and trust
• Empowering others and respecting differences
• Encouraging risk-taking and responsibility
• Enjoying our work and our families

Program  Context

PEM PAL (Public Expenditure Management Peer Assisted Learning) is a program to create networks of practitioners in public finance in Central and Eastern Europe as well as the Central Asian Region (ECA countries). The network at present includes members from 17 countries of the region and puts an emphasis on involving the member countries with less developed institutional systems.

The purpose of the networks is to share experience on reform implementation in key areas of public financial management through the so called Communities of Practice (CoPs). PEM PAL network is currently organised around three thematic communities of practice, including Treasury CoP, Budget CoP and Internal Audit CoP.

Benchmarking is used to stimulate peer to peer exchanges; whereas the Public Expenditure & Financial Accountability indicators (PEFA) provide the general benchmarking tool and more drill-down specific tools are used for the functional areas covered by the Communities of Practice.

The PEMPAL program was conceptualized by the World Bank and the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and is supported by other development partners, including Switzerland, US treasury, GTZ, InWent and the OECD.  The basic logistical support for the organization of events and information flow through the website is ensured by the Center of Excellence in Finance (Lijubljana, Slovenija) in its role as a PEM PAL Secretariat along the lines described in the Rules of Operation of the initiative. More details about the program can be found at PEM PAL web site (www.pempal.org).

Duties and Accountabilities

The PEM PAL community facilitator, working in Ljubljana, Slovenia, is expected to provide the following support across all three CoPs:

• Support for  the learning agenda of the community

1. Assist CoPs to develop and maintain a learning agenda, including: identify issues of interest for learning agenda and ensure distribution of knowledge information, keep abreast of developments in the respective professional fields and inform members accordingly; manage and update agenda based on feedback.

2. Connect the community to their respective international field of expertise including: (i) relate the CoP to professional associations, (ii) ensure involvement of and support from international institutions, (iii) search for and engaging best practitioners to accommodate members’ requests.

3. Ensure access to relevant standards as well as other documents of professional interest for the COP. Facilitate sharing of relevant  documentation and other types of professional information between the members through the web based databank.

4. Facilitate knowledge sharing on experiences in application of relevant benchmarking tools by members and facilitate the application of such tools.

5.  Develop a database of success stories on specific aspects of CoP development, including documenting ‘what works’ in terms of network development and strengthening.

• Support to the leadership teams (executive committee) and sub-groups

1. Help leadership teams to identify vision and strategy for development of CoPs.

2. Help leadership teams prepare annual work programs and budgets.

3. Help with preparing and facilitating leadership team meetings and virtual discussions.

4. Support to CoP work groups including: comments on work, identification of resource people and synergies with existing initiatives; act as broker between group members and other interested parties as needed.

5. Help leadership teams to foster informal and formal communication among members through various means.

6. Help with preparation of materials to be posted at CoP web page.

7. Help the leadership teams to strengthen consistency of membership in member countries and play an advocacy role in enlarging and deepening memberships.

• Support in elaborating strategies to attract funding for the PEMPAL network

Facilitator is also expected to contribute to preparation of the strategies by the PEM PAL Secretariat and Steering Committee to attract new donors  or private sponsors to support PEM PAL activities with a view to gain a certain degree of self-sufficiency of the PEM PAL program in the medium term.


Selection Criteria

The expert should have the following qualifications and skills:

• Master’s degree or equivalent in a relevant area (economics, accounting, finance, public administration, etc.)

• At least 8 years of relevant professional experience, including experience within a ministry or public organization either as a public official/employee or external advisor/consultant in one of the following fields: public finance policy formulation; budget oversight; budget execution process and reporting; financial management and control; public sector audit.

• Substantive experience as an international consultant /advisor in a developing economy or country in transition.

• Familiarity with PEFA indicators is desirable.

• Demonstrated ability to deal with high level government counterparts.

• Strong communication skills, experience in facilitating group discussions and ability to use web based tools and video conferencing for group communication.

• Fluency in English. Ability to communicate in Russian is highly desirable. Knowledge of other languages of South East Europe is desirable.


Personal characteristics

Ideally, this person should be a current practitioner or a past practitioner in the domain of public financial management with a degree of familiarity with topics addressed by the different CoPs. This person should ideally have a deep understanding of the reform challenges faced by members and cultural sensitivity to deal with members from countries with different cultural and linguistic background.

The ideal candidate will:

• Have a passion for the PFM domain and its importance.

• Be credible in the domain.

• Be acceptable by the community professionally and personally.

• Have a vision for improved practices, innovation, and direction for the domain.

• Be reasonably good at dealing with people.

• Have a working understanding of communities of practice.

• See the community and its cultivation as a personal learning opportunity.


Estimated time requirement

The initial duration of the assignment is 12 months, with a possibility of extension till June 30, 2012, subject to satisfactory performance. The Community Facilitator will work as a full-time expert at the PEMPAL Secretariat which is located at the Center of Excellence in Finance, having its permanent premises at Cankarjeva 18, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia.

More information about the advertisment can be obtained on the World Bank external site (Vacancy Number 101735):

http://web.worldbank.org/external/default/main?menuPK=64778834&pagePK=64273550&piPK=64778828&theSitePK=1058433

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PEMPAL is looking for a dynamic individual to play a role of a Community Facilitator for PEMPAL COPs.

For more information read the attachment bellow:

PEMPAL Community Facilitator.pdf

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• Georgia
• Belarus
• Moldova
• Armenia
• Montenegro
• Kyrgyzstan
• Ukraine
• Tajikistan

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DRI of Montenegro invites SAIs from the ECA region to a regional seminar

Representatives from SAIs from the ECA region came together from the 22 to 24 October in Pržno, Montenegro for a regional seminar on “Human Resource Management in Supreme Audit Institutions” to discuss the role of human resources in public external audit. Tasked with the external audit of public finances and government performance, Supreme Audit Institutions (SAI) can only be as good as the quality of the staff they employ. Conscious of this pivotal role played by human resources in public external audit, participants from the SAIs of Albania, Armenia, Belarus, Croatia, Georgia, Kyrgyz, Moldavia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia exchanged ideas and experiences on staff management and development. Further inputs were given by SAI and Human Resource Management (HRM) experts from the German Federal Court of Audit, the Riksrevisionen of Sweden and the CEF. The seminar was hosted by the Državna Revizorska Institucija (DRI) of Montenegro and organised by the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) GmbH.

Auditors, Audit Institutions and the management of change

The seminar focused on three issues in particular. First, the unique and complex qualifications SAIs demand from their Auditors. Instruments for assessing, recruiting and continuously training SAI staff in light of these requirements were presented from SAIs in the Region and from Dr. Lars Friege from the German Federal Court of Audit. Second, the impacts and implications human resources bring for SAIs as organisations. SAIs rely on the performance of their knowledge workers to fulfil their role in the governance of the public sector and the country in general. Putting HRM into its context, Mr. Lage Olofsson from the Riksrevisionen of Sweden outlined a framework linking staff performance to the criteria of a well performing SAI as outlined by the Lima Declaration of 1977, whose principles are shared by SAIs around the world. Third, the contextual requirements for both Auditors and SAIs operating in a complex, changing environment were emphasised by Dr. Igor Šoltes, President from the Court of Audit of Slovenia, and Mrs. Zdenka Vidovič of the CEF in a shared presentation on knowledge management. They urged SAIs to embrace both the fluid nature of their task and the human qualities of their auditors in their day-to-day work. By this, SAIs themselves become agents of change for better financial governance as noted by GTZ senior public governance expert Roland von Frankenhorst in closing of the seminar.            

Peer learning to develop capacities of SAIs for Human Resource Management

The complex picture of HRM needs and opportunities of SAIs that was drawn in Pržno served as a basis to explore options for regional exchange, the sharing of expertise and peer learning among the SAIs of the ECA countries. In his opening speech, Mr. Miroslav Ivanisevic, President of the DRI of Montenegro, set the main theme for the seminar by underlining the value of pooling the experience and knowledge from the region through an International Education Centre that would serve the diverse needs of SAIs in training their auditing and management staff. The advantages of combining the methodological and management know-how from different SAIs for a comprehensive, quality education of auditors were laid out in further detailed by the DRI during the seminar. Mr. Nikola Vikićević, head of the Budget CoP, laid out the good experiences by PEMPAL had in the last years in creating options for regional peer learning and benchmarking of performances for on-the-job challenges of experts from different institutions of public finance. Given the complex and specific challenges SAIs face, the open exchange among professional peers from the region offers promising opportunities to improve external audit capacities in the coming years.

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PEM PAL is organizing the Meeting of the Members of the Executive Committees of the Communities of Practice to be held in Ljubljana, Slovenia from July 1 to July 3, 2008.

The goal of the meeting, which is being sponsored by the PEM PAL, is to discuss goals, ideas, and expectations of the members of the PEM PAL Communities of Practice (CoP), their leaders as well as PEM PAL donors. During the meeting we plan to analyze the needs the CoP leaders have to make their CoPs successful. The meeting in Ljubljana will be the follow-up of the meeting held in Istanbul, Turkey from 24 to 28 February, 2008.

DRAFT AGENDA

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