“Ukraine is successfully implementing public administration reform, completing 21 of the 23 planned steps in 2023. This was announced by the Head of the Committee of the Verkhovna Rada on the Organization of State Power, Local Self-Government, Regional Development and Urban Planning, leader of the Servant of the People party, Olena Shulyak, referring to the results of the Report on the implementation in 2024 of the State Administration Reform Strategy of Ukraine for 2022-2025”, — write on: ua.news
Ukraine is successfully implementing public administration reform, completing 21 of the 23 planned steps in 2023.
This was reported by the Head of the Committee of the Verkhovna Rada on the Organization of State Power, Local Self-Government, Regional Development and Urban Planning, leader of the Servant of the People party Olena Shulyak, referring to the results of the Report on the implementation in 2024 of the State Administration Reform Strategy of Ukraine for 2022-2025, writes RBC-Ukraine.
She emphasized that one of the defining achievements was the implementation of the law, which makes changes to about 200 legislative acts, removing conflicts and increasing the compliance of Ukrainian legislation with EU standards.
This reform is critical for fulfilling the terms of the Ukraine Facility program for 50 billion euros, which Ukraine will receive by 2027.
According to the document, she said, the reform of public administration has moved from conditionally technical categories to the category of basic prerequisites for EU membership. There are three key areas of change: quality of public services and procedures, professional public service and effective governance. They are a condition for joining the EU, as well as one of the 150 indicators of the implementation of the Ukraine Facility program, under which Ukraine receives 50 billion euros until 2027. In 2024, Olena Shulyak emphasized, the reform of public administration actually became one of Ukraine’s responses to a double challenge: the third year of a full-scale war and a parallel movement towards the opening of full membership negotiations.
“As of today, more than 150,000 civil servants work in civil service positions. Therefore, when we talk about reforming the public administration system, we must understand that it will affect tens of thousands of Ukrainians. At the same time, last year showed that without reform there will be no access to financing within the Ukraine Facility,” Olena Shulyak explained.
According to her, the report clearly records the concrete progress of the implementation of the Strategy itself. In 2024, the deadline for the implementation of 23 measures coincided, of which 21 have already been implemented. In total, since the beginning of the implementation of the plan of measures, 36 out of 43, whose deadline has come, have been completed. A separate block is a system of indicators: for twenty indicators, 30 target values are determined each year, and by 2024, 14 of them have been achieved. Some of the indicators, the parliamentarian admits, either cannot yet be measured due to objective limitations during the martial law, or need to be adjusted because they were planned in peacetime.
A separate item, Olena Shulyak informed, is the first direction of the Strategy – quality services and convenient procedures. An important step here was the entry into force of the Law “On Administrative Procedure” through the adoption by the parliament and the entry into force of the comprehensive law on changes to special legislation.
“This document eliminates conflicts between the general rules of the administrative procedure, bringing the Ukrainian model closer to the European approach, where the citizen has a clear, transparent procedure for interaction with the authorities. At the same time, the state continued to invest in digitalization, which is an undeniable anti-corruption safeguard. In particular, the functionality of “Action” was expanded, Shulyak recalled.
She is convinced that the reform of the administrative procedure should be measured not by the names of laws, but by how clear and fair interaction with the state becomes.
“In 2024, the Verkhovna Rada adopted Law No. 4017-IX, which amends 196 legislative acts and eliminates conflicts between the general Law “On Administrative Procedure” and special laws. At the same time, the government simplified a number of specific procedures, and instead of the planned five, we have thirteen simplified processes for the provision of public services,” said the People’s Deputy.
It is no less important that the implementation of the administrative procedure is supported not only by regulations, but also by systematic work with human capital in the state. The report states that thousands of public servants and local government officials have been trained in new approaches to the general administrative procedure. Hundreds of civil servants, who are directly involved in the European integration track, advanced their qualifications at the Higher School of Public Administration under special programs dedicated to Ukraine-EU relations and the approximation of Ukrainian legislation to the EU acquis – the entire array of norms by which the European Union lives every day.
The second major block of the Strategy, which Olena Shulyak drew attention to, is professional public service and personnel management. In 2024, according to the report, the reform of the system of remuneration of civil servants began – due to the decision in the law on the State Budget, a new logic was introduced, when wages are based on a transparent classification of positions.
“This should reduce the scope for manipulation of allowances and other variable elements, make the remuneration system fairer and more predictable. At the same time, the report honestly records: not all target indicators regarding the share of civil servants who have undergone advanced training have been achieved, so this task will be carried over to the following years,” emphasized Olena Shulyak.
The launch of a new salary system with a clear classification of positions can be considered a positive signal of the state’s movement from a chaotic model of allowances to a more understandable and fair reward system. However, the authors of the report note that in 2024, Ukraine did not reach the planned indicators of qualification improvement, and this should become one of the priorities for the next period.
Finally, the deputy noted that the implementation of the State Administration Reform Strategy in 2024 is important not only for the government or the parliament, but also for international partners and Ukrainian society as a whole. Transparent reporting, clear numbers and recognition of problems, concluded Olena Shulyak, are part of the new culture of public administration, to which Ukraine is moving along with the reform of public administration.
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