In March, the local government officials from Lviv and Zakarpattia Oblasts learned how to apply the Law on Administrative Procedure during a two-day training conducted by the USAID HOVERLA Activity. Community leaders, council secretaries, executive committee members, lawyers, and employees of administrative service centers (ASCs) joined the event to improve their skills.

This is one of the most challenging laws for local government bodies to implement, as its people-centric approach completely changed the officials’ work. The USAID HOVERLA Activity team has been working with communities on the law implementation before its enactment in December 2023.

Before the training, the USAID HOVERLA Activity experts conducted a survey and identified the most challenging topics for communities, such as how the law works in different administrative bodies and for different officials and the procedure for administrative appeals. During the event, the participants discussed these topics based on real-life examples and cases. Experts also presented a template of the Regulation on the Commission for Complaint Review and discussed the difficulties in its implementation.

"This law poses many challenges, especially for ASCs," emphasized Nataliia Matviichuk, the head of the Rava-Ruska ASC, - "How to consult visitors on complaints or administrative procedure review? Where to direct the complaint? How to help a person write it and provide a complete list of documents? I received answers to all of these questions. Also, I got an explanation about the procedure for the creation of the appeal review commission. Thank you to the USAID HOVERLA Activity for this useful training! This is not the first such event - one of HOVERLA's forums inspired me to study public administration in a university. And now I am a master's program student!"

Maria Povshak, the head of the Legal Support and Corruption Detection Department of the Executive Committee of the Brody City Council, emphasized the benefits of such training for lawyers:

"Lawyers usually study each article in detail. Sometimes we lack a comprehensive approach. Thanks to the training session, I understood how to implement the law step-by-step, and which of our local acts require updates to ensure compliance. My biggest challenge is understanding how to apply the law in connection with other legislation and our internal regulations so that it works for the benefit of people!"

Throughout the year, such training program will be conducted for all HOVERLA partner communities of Volyn, Rivne, Zhytomyr, Sumy, Chernihiv, Poltava, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, and Odesa Oblasts.

The USAID HOVERLA Activity supports the efforts of the Ministry of Restoration in establishing effective interaction among executive authorities, local government, citizens, and businesses.