ASTANA – Pierre Gevart, senior expert of the European Union sponsored project, “The Civil Service Reform and Modernisation of the Government of Kazakhstan,” trained civil servants and the teaching staff of the Public Administration Academy under the President of Kazakhstan, and the Regional Retraining and Skills Upgrading Centres for Civil Servants on Oct. 2-11.
The first day of the training sessions, held within the framework of a skills-upgrading seminar for Corps A administrative civil servants, focused on leadership issues in the civil service. The participants included executive secretaries and heads of central state bodies as well as heads of regional and Astana and Almaty akimats (regional or city administrations). Gevart, author of numerous articles and books on public administration, discussed the French civil service leadership model and the skills required for a leader in the current context. The training sessions also included a discussion of the ways of developing leadership skills in civil servants and question-answer sections.
On the second day, Gevart spoke on social conflict management, prevention measures and conflict resolution. Gevart also conducted a separate training session for the academic teaching staff of the Public Administration Academy. The training was aimed at developing ways to further improve the teaching and learning methods of civil servants in the academy. He presented modern teaching methods used for civil servants. Developing case studies and formulating situation and simulation tasks were also discussed.
The training is part of an effort to use up-to-date, interactive teaching methods with civil servants. Issues of applying various electronic or technology-based teaching methods were raised and discussed along with the role of mentoring and coaching in teaching.
The teaching staff praised Gevart’s experience and expertise and noted how extensively they use his research papers in teaching. Aliya Mukhamedzhanova, vice rector of the academy, invited the French expert to visit the academy again and to deliver additional training to the teaching staff wherever possible.
Final training sessions are to be held for the teaching staff of the Regional Retraining and Skills Upgrading Centres for Civil Servants.
The EU Project is planning to organise European country study tours for the academy teaching staff; in particular, to provide an opportunity to visit ENA (the National School of Public Administration in France), the University of Potsdam and Leiden University.
