On 20 December, a remote workplace for an administrator of the Administrative Service Centre (ASC), established with the support of the Ukrainian and Swedish experts, was opened in the rural settlement of Irdyn of the Bilozirska AH in the Cherkasy Oblast. Due to the remote workplace creation, over 5,000 residents of the Bilozirska AH receive access to quality services in the “single window” format. Previously, they had to overcome the distance of 10 to 30 km to the nearest ASC.

The U-LEAD with Europe Programme assisted to develop and implement the functional model of administrative services’ provision, equip the centre with furniture and modern technology with specialised software, renovate premises and train hromada workers. The remote workplace of the ASC administrator will deliver 61 services, besides, it will provide a full consultation and assistance in processing the documents on over 160 administrative services of the ASC of the Bilozirska AH. The service fee will be paid to the hromada budget. During the opening ceremony, the first registration of the documents of the Irdyn settlement resident was carried out.

Susanna Dellans, Project Manager of the U-LEAD with Europe Programme’s Support to Improved Administrative Service Delivery, said: “We are very pleased that, in partnership with the hromada, we were able to improve access to administrative services for more than 5 thousand residents of the Bilozirska AH, because the quality of providing state services is perhaps the most important indicator of the effectiveness of the local authorities’ work. I am grateful to the hromada for their proactive stance and maximum engagement in our cooperation.”

Volodymyr Mitsuk, head of the Bilozirska AH, noted: “We have a wonderful office of the remote workplace of the Administrative Service Centre in the rural settlement of Irdyn due to the U-LEAD with Europe Programme. I am grateful to the the Programme experts for their institutional and financial assistance, as well as for the training of the ASC employees, as now we will be able to deliver a qualitatively new service level to citizens.”

Within the framework of cooperation with the Programme, the employees of the ASC in the Biloziska AH passed a series of training sessions, organised by leading Ukrainian and Swedish experts for the ASC staff in amalgamated hromadas. It should be noted that a lot of attention in the curriculum is devoted to the gender equality topic: future employees of the Centre get acquanted with this issue within a separate module.

On the eve of the opening, the residents were informed about the features of the ASC work, its advantages, rights and obligations of employees and consumers of services. The Centre is accessible to people with disabilities and has a children’s indoor play corner.

It is worth reminding that 26 ASCs will be opened in Ukrainian amalgamated hromadas within the framework of the U-LEAD with Europe Programme which aims at improving the delivery of local administrative services. The best practices for creating and improving the delivery of administrative services that are tested and implemented in 26 pilot hromadas of the inception phase will be applied to all ASCs to be opened or modernised within the next phase of the Programme. That is at least 600 ASCs by the end of 2020.