uring the last years the Andean countries Peru, Ecuador und Bolivia carried out more intensively legal and institutional reforms in order to transfer more authority to lower administrative units. Hence, in Bolivia a framework law was approved, which aims at strengthening the autonomy of the 36 cultural groups and further promoting the decentralisation process. (Ley Marco de Autonomías y Descentralización). Continuing the decentralisation process in Peru which started in 2002, a national School of Public Administration was established in 2012 and a law on career system (Ley de Servicio Civil) was approved in 2013. The latter focuses on employee performance and competences for the subsequent classification and salary payment.

The new constitution of Ecuador of 2008 aims at a complete reorganisation of the state with an extensive decentralisation of public authority. The procedures will be specified in a detailed plan for the years 2012 and 2015. The implementation of these complex reform initiatives faces, besides financial restrictions, mostly insufficient qualification of technical staff and management leaders.

Within the regional Project “Strengthening capacities for decentralisation in the Andean Region (2012-2014) – Fortalecimiento de Capacidades para la Descentralización en los Paises Andinos (CADESAN) – GIZ cooperates with the national partner organisations to contribute to the establishment of an effective capacity development system.

Due to the common character of problems, the project deliberately relies on the instrument of regional exchange of experiences, in order to facilitate the mutual learning process among the three countries. Building on the analysis of the present offer of continuous training in the three countries, a variety of dialogue and training activities are implemented. These are focused on the organization and management of networks to improve the further training offer for civil servants. Dialogue events are used initially to sensitize political decision makers about the possibilities and the sense of networking in further training and advanced education. In training courses – using blended-training-methods, the staff which is ultimately responsible for the implementation, is taught contents and gains capacities about the organization and management of networks. Technical exchange programmes, short term counseling and documentation of Good-Practice examples are further instruments applied. A main focus is the practical orientation of all activities, meaning the concrete transfer of learned contents within the working context of the participant. Participants of the networks of the three countries are national institutes with a mandate on decentralisation policies, national schools of public administration, selected territorial units as well as selected universities and non-governmental organisations.

Sustainable urban development needs an active approach in creation and dissemination of knowledge. The partner countries and their managers responsible for further training can draw on an already existing multi-faceted offer of public and private training institutions for municipal technical and management staff. At present many of these offers show deficits in their demand-orientation, quality management and adaptation to the needs of staff development in the civil service. Additionally, there also exist increased costs due to parallel structures. As the project CADESAN illustrates, networks - integrating the relevant actors - may provide an effective coordination and cooperation for a further training offer which will fulfill requirements of demand and quality. As challenges are similar, an organised exchange of experiences between neighboring countries may be an additional value.