AN INNOVATIVE MODEL OF TRANS-NATIONAL LEARNING

ENVIRONMENT FOR EUROPEAN SENIOR CIVIL SERVANTS

Organizational Aspects and Governance

Nunzio Casalino

Università Telematica Gugliemo Marconi, Via Plinio 44, 00193 Rome, Italy

CeRSI – LUISS Guido Carli, Via Alberoni 7, 00198 Rome, Italy

Keywords: e-Learning, Civil servant, Public administration, Training methodology, Blended learning.

Abstract: The purpose of the study will be to investigate the benefits of the introduction of e-learning and of a specific

online environment in the training process of European civil servants. It describes the final results and the

organisational impact of a first pilot training course combining 24 hours of e-learning and 27 hours (one

week) of in-class courses. For each module, the e-learning preparation provided general training contents to

enhance participants background necessary for in-class sessions. The project implemented a pilot to

demonstrate the effectiveness of the overall system (applications, contents and organizational aspects), to

promote the use of e-learning in the EU Public Administration field. After one year, the project concluded

its pilot phase and the results will be analyzed. With a view to stimulating co-operation and the exchange of

best practices in Europe, its purpose is to build and test an innovative model of trans-national networking,

thanks to the active involvement of European schools and institutes of Public Administration.

1 INTRODUCTION

The paper investigates the benefits of the

introduction of e-learning and of a specific

methodology in a training process of European civil

servants. It describes the final results and the

organisational impact of a first pilot course

combining one month of e-learning courses and one

week of in-class courses. For each didactic module,

the e-learning phase provided general training

contents to enforce participants background

necessary for in-class sessions. There are many ways

of learning, specific needs and approaches. If we

think of life-long training for civil servants, one of

the most important points is to find a learning

method which would work well. Learning is not a

matter of simply adding one piece of knowledge to

another. If we plot learning activities on a graph

with time on one axis and achievement on the other,

we will see that learning doesn’t take place as a

simple curve.

It is required to fully improve the ability and

quality of civil servants and make them uncorrupted,

self-disciplined and professional, related to

governmental regulations state that civil servants at

provincial and ministerial levels, department and

bureau levels, county and section levels. To obtain

these skills, often they should participate to training

activities as schools of administration, executive

leadership academies or other training organizations

approved by the single human resource offices at the

department and bureau level or above. An analysis

of the main drivers to introduce a real change in the

Public Administration (PA) context was undertaken.

We looked at the political, economic, social, legal

and environmental contexts of Public Administration

to develop and implement an accurate training

strategy. The following factors were identified to

better develop the training activities:

Political factors:

 commitment to create a modern European

public administration to support social and

economic development;

 new relationships established between the

national civil servants in the EU context;

 reform and institution building of which

training and development is an important sub-

component;

 absence of a civil servant wide human resource

strategy and policy as a framework for

training and development.

148

Casalino N. (2009).

AN INNOVATIVE MODEL OF TRANS-NATIONAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT FOR EUROPEAN SENIOR CIVIL SERVANTS - Organizational Aspects

and Governance.

In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Human-Computer Interaction, pages 148-153

DOI: 10.5220/0002163601480153

 SciTePress

Economic factors:

 resource constraints owing to new macro

economic situation;

 an expected cut of national and European funds.

Social factors:

 motivation of people for self development;

 opportunities for many civil servants to meet

international best practices in Public

Administration;

 implementing a real change management;

 lack of embedded management culture in Public

Administrations;

 transferability of several Public Administration

approaches to the other situations;

 knowledge and individual experiences exchange

between civil servants;

 training currently has low status and

acceptability. Sometime it is viewed as

additional to day to day work.

Legal and environmental factors:

 traditions of a law based approach to Public

Administration;

 primacy of the regulation to determine PA

competence;

 lack of dedicated training infrastructure.

For the project has been implemented a pilot to

demonstrate the effectiveness of the overall system

(applications, contents and organizational aspects)

and to promote the use of e-learning in the EU

Public Administration field. After one year, the

project concluded its pilot phase and the results

analyzed. With a view to stimulating co-operation

and the exchange of best practices in Europe, its

purpose is to build and test an innovative model of

trans-national networking, thanks to the active

involvement of European schools and institutes of

Public Administration and to their participation in a

scientific committee of experts, established to define

guidelines for the project.

2 PROJECT GOALS AND

OBJECTIVES

The paper introduces a training experience of the

Italian SSPA (Scuola Superiore della PA) and

summarizes the experiences and lessons obtained

from the introduction of e-learning into the civil

servants training field. The project ESCS, launched

in 2007, is an initiative financed by the Italian

government and aims at developing shared

knowledge, key skills and competences among

middle rank civil servants of National Public

Administrations in order to increase and improve

collaboration and civil servants’ mobility within the

EU Member States. It is an initiative implemented

within the framework of the Agreement entitled

“The promotion of coordinated initiatives to

implement the Lisbon 2000 objectives for training

senior civil servants from the Italian State and other

European Union countries” and it followed the

positive experience of the Patent Project funded by

the Leonardo da Vinci programme of the European

Commission and aimed at shaping a European

shared framework for the training of senior civil

servants in order to promote mobility and mutual

understanding. The goal of the project is to develop

shared knowledge, key skills and competences

among middle rank civil servants of National Public

Administrations in order to increase and improve

collaboration and civil servants mobility within the

European Union countries. The partners included

some of the most important European schools and

institutions such as:

 the Scuola Superiore della Pubblica

Amministrazione - SSPA (Italy);

 the National Centre for IT in Public

Administration - CNIPA (Italy);

 the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

(France);

 the Ecole Nationale d’Administration - ENA

(France);

 the Bundesakademie für öffentliche Verwaltung

im Bundesministerium des Innern - BAköV

(Germany);

 the National School of Public Administration -

EKDDA (Greece);

 the Kormányzati Személyügyi Szolgáltató és

Közigazgatási Képzési Központ - KSZK

(Government Centre for Public

Administration and Human Resource

Services) (Hungary);

 the Krajowa Szkola Administracji Publicznej -

KSAP (Poland);

 the National School of Government (UK).

On the basis of the “scientific curriculum of the

European senior civil servant”, developed by a

scientific committee of experts, a pilot training

programme for civil servants of EU member

countries was implemented and tested. The first pilot

training course held from February, 1-29 for the e-

learning session and March, 3-7 for in-class training

at the Reggia Palace in Caserta, with a class

composed of 30 participants from the partner

countries. The class was composed of senior middle-

AN INNOVATIVE MODEL OF TRANS-NATIONAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT FOR EUROPEAN SENIOR CIVIL

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rank civil servants from European national public

administrations wishing to sign up for mobility

initiatives within European Union countries. The

training programme has been defined to reach the

following learning outcomes:

 shared knowledge, key skills and competences

to collaborate with EU colleagues;

 specific knowledge of each country. The pilot

course focused on 4 countries (IT, PL, UK, F);

 each module was taught by the partner school

which has developed it.

Training was delivered in English by high-level

lecturers and experts from different European

backgrounds. An end-of-course certificate

recognised by all the partner Schools was released to

the participants. According to these assumptions and

trying to answer to some main research questions,

with a study that intends to evidence the main

problems related to technological and organizational

aspects. The application of e-learning in civil

servants training encountered also some difficulties.

SSPA adopted a basic e-learning platform and a

blended learning method. Both e-learning and

traditional classroom teaching have their respective

advantages and disadvantages, and appropriate

teaching mode is dependent on different training

courses and training objects. The civil servant

training covers both basic theoretical contents and

case studies, and is suitable for a blended learning.

3 TRAINING METHODOLOGY

ADOPTED

The choice to adopt a blended approach, based on

in-class training and e-learning, gave extremely

positive and efficient results and was highly rated by

participants, who were invited to assess the quality

of the training through ex ante, in itinere and ex post

evaluation forms. The results of these evaluations

provided a very useful basis to improve and

implement other ESCS courses in the future. After

making a careful and through research, the author

determined the processes of this specific experience

for civil servants, as shown in the figure.

According to the previous processes, the system

consists of four subsystems: courses, teaching

administration, tutoring and system management. To

fulfil these objectives, we tried to design and

implement a training model of teaching, transferable

and repeatable in different European contexts, in

order to enable PA civil servants to acquire the

shared knowledge and the necessary country-

specific background to start working in a Public

Administration in another EU member State. A final

certificate, recognised and validated by the project

partners through a memorandum of understanding,

and bearing their respective logo, was delivered at

the end of the course by the Italian Minister for

Reform and Innovation in Public Administration.

Figure 1: Process chart of the platform for civil servants.

The mixed backgrounds and nationalities of the

audience and the lecturers is an important asset. The

e-learning part was delivered through a platform,

created with the collaboration of CNIPA, the Italian

Centre for ICT in Public Administration, and

accessible through the SSPA website (platform

address: http://www.sspa.it/escs/).

Figure 2: The e-learning platform for civil servants.

The open-source platform created by CNIPA for

this purpose was based on the Learning Management

System named “Moodle”. With only a few

modifications, this system became even more

functional and adapted to the participants’ needs.

The e-learning contents included mainly text

material. Before the beginning of the course, the

tutor sent to each participant an e-mail containing

the access ID and password as well as all the

necessary instructions for accessing the platform.

Users accounts were created by the platform

administrator for participants, lecturers, staff and

tutors. The language chosen for communications

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between participants, lecturers and tutors was

English. The tutor followed progress made by each

participant in the e-learning course and maintained

direct and regular contacts with them by e-mail. A

pre-assessment quiz, an intermediate questionnaire

and a final test were prepared in order to assess

participants knowledge before, during and after the

e-learning. The tests were performed on-line by the

participants. Regular contacts between the tutor and

the users were kept in order to exchange information

related to the overall implementation of the pilot

course, to the individual access to the platform by

each participant and to the tuning of the e-learning

contents and platform. Moreover, a forum was

created for each module in order to enable

participants to interact with the tutor and the

teaching staff on specific contents. The platform

included also three additional forum: a forum café, a

technical forum and a news forum in which was

possible to publish useful information. The contents

of the platform were interactive, with full tutorial

assistance available for users, who had the

possibility to interact via a “forum café” and a

“technical forum”. As far as the functionality of the

platform is concerned, interaction modalities proved

to be quite efficient and immediate and the quick

and simple description of the resources provided

through a video tutorial was quite useful. From the

evaluation questionnaires, it emerged that the e-

learning contents, were rated, as a whole, as

efficient, exhaustive, relevant and tuned with the in-

class contents. Following the blended learning

approach, the in-class part of the course aimed at

providing a more in-depth insight of the topics

tackled in the e-learning part. A third level included

country specific parts. For these sessions,

participants were divided into 3 groups in different

classrooms. In-class training was organised into 6-

hours teaching days. Participants were asked to fill-

in evaluation questionnaires at the end of each

training day and at the end of the course in order to

receive an exhaustive feedback on the overall course

organisation and the knowledge acquired.

4 PROJECT IMPROVEMENTS

As shown by the overall active participation during

the implementation of the course, the selection

procedure proved to be valid and it would be

advisable to adopt the same methods for future.

Possible improvements in this respect may

include for instance a more complete information on

the course and selection procedures (indicating

clearly the selection criteria) through the SSPA

website. Moreover, we want to examine the

possibility to adopt the same procedure used by

SSPA. It was possible to identify some suggestions

for improving the learning methods such as:

 the e-learning contents could be completed with

other material based on different media

(software or links to relevant websites

presenting statistics or economic data of

interest, slides or data to be examined during

the in-class sessions, videos presenting in-

depth analysis or practical cases) available in

streaming or download mode. The resources

needed in this respect are quite reasonable for

very good results in terms of quality,

processing and connection times;

 a better way to contact the tutor for a more

immediate interaction (in the current version,

the tutor can be contacted only by e-mail);

 extension of the e-learning course length to two

months. Many participants claimed in their

evaluation questionnaires to have faced

difficulties to follow thoroughly and carefully

the e-learning modules;

 introduction of more immediate communication

tools in order to establish a direct line between

tutor, participants, staff and lecturers (chat,

wiki, etc.) and obtain a major involvement

(full immersion);

 introduction of a scheduling function or “to do

list” in order to provide information related to

training activities or deepening;

 improvement of the monitoring and reporting

features (progress report) in order to provide

participants with a detailed list of

topics/lessons and the scores obtained in tests

and exercises;

 elimination of the automatic transfer of

messages from the technical forum to the

whole list of platform users (spam effect).

 daily in-class training could be re-organised

laying greater stress on morning activities in

order to leave more time in the afternoon for

study and social activities;

 splitting the group of participants not country-

specific sub-groups left a sense of

incompleteness to some participants, who

expressed the need to have a final plenary

session for the general review of the topics

dealt with. Many participants were in fact

interested in gaining an insight of all three

countries.

Participants appreciated the practical approach

adopted as well as the use of case studies, exercises,

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role playing and team working activities. We tried to

find a correct mix of PA objectives, information

systems and organizational aspects to find an

accepted methodology for these courses.

5 COURSE STRUCTURE AND

LEARNING EVALUATION

The main modules adopted for the online and in-

class training activities are:

European Integration and EU institutions:

 The historical origins of the EU;

 EU policy areas and EU enlargement;

 EU legal framework;

 EU decision making procedures;

 EU effective networking and lobbying.

EU Legal Framework and Country-specific:

 Political institution and legal framework;

 Public administration and coordination;

 Political role and legislative process;

 Coordination with EU laws;

 Public administration: legal power and civil

service legal status;

 Policy making decision and implementation;

 Civil servant role in the process of

implementation;

 Explanation of professional skills for

government.

Managerial tools and behaviour:

 Change management;

 Motivating and coaching people;

 Cross-cultural and diversity management.

Ethics:

 Introduction to ethical reasoning;

 Typical cases of ethical conflict in PA;

Statistics:

 How to read a statistical document;

 How to perform statistical comparisons;

 How to perform statistical analyses.

Economics – general training:

 Principles of EU economic policy;

 European monetary integration;

 Current issues of economic policy in the EU;

 Competition policies in the EU and its member

States;

 The Lisbon process;

 Countries economic outlook;

 Key institutions;

 Institutions and regulatory framework;

 Policy issues.

The evaluation was made after the e-learning

modules, during and after the in-class modules.

Participants were asked to indicate how far they

agree or disagree with the following statements:

 if they learned new ideas or skills (or both) by

attending the blended course;

 if they learned something that they can

definitely use in their day-to-day work;

 if they learned something new from talking to

other colleagues;

 if they learned things which can help they in the

long term.

0246

Unsatisfactorily

Adequately

Well

Very well

How well do you think the course met

its aims?

02468

Poorly

Unsatisfactorily

Adequately

Well

Very well

How well were your personal learning

goals met?

0 5 10 15 20

Strongly disagree

Tend to disagree

Tend to agree

Strongly agree

I have learned something new from talking to

other people

0246810

Strongly disagree

Tend to disagree

Tend to agree

Strongly agree

I have learned new ideas or skills (or both) by

attending this event

0246810

Strongly disagree

Tend to disagree

Tend to agree

Strongly agree

I have learned something that I will definitely use

in my day-to-day work

0246810

Strongly disagree

Tend to disagree

Tend to agree

Strongly agree

I have learned things which will help me in the

longer term

Figure 3: Some screenshot of the questionnaire results.

Participants were asked also to rate the training

course modules in their features:

 relevance of the topic covered;

 in-depth analysis of the topic;

 effectiveness of the presentations;

 efficiency and relevance of didactical tools;

 balance between theory and practice;

 involvement in the didactical activity;

 training materials/handouts used;

 interaction with other course participants.

After the pre-assessment phase, the learning results

has been very enthusiastic and the rate of the

attendants was very high:

 pre-assessment quiz average: 50,14%;

 on-line learning modules attendance: 78,45%;

 final test average: 87,26%;

 forum usage average: 49,13%

 participants interaction: 34,56%

The main aspects emerging from daily evaluation

forms were the positive rating of the topics and the

added value of the modules. The final questionnaire

aimed at evaluating the overall satisfaction, the

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attainment of the course objectives and of personal

training goals. As a whole, participants gave a

general positive feedback. Other questions more

strictly related to the course organisation and the

services provided (course administration, venue,

catering and accommodation), were also included.

These aspects were rated positively by participants.

Figure 4: Some screenshot of the evaluation results.

6 CONCLUSIONS

It is generally accepted that, in order to compete in

today’s complex and rapidly changing world, civil

servants will need continuous access to learning

resources throughout their entire working lives.

Increased competition and financial limitations make

a pressure for flexible learning to become an

essential ingredient of educational policy. The

purpose of the project is to develop shared

knowledge, to update know-how, to improve skills

and competences among middle rank civil servants

of EU Public Administrations in order to increase

collaboration and mobility within the European

Union countries. Flexible learning methods, usually,

give more attention to the learning process, the

ability to learn, the need to learn rather than the

acquisition of knowledge itself. Therefore, they need

of active learners to solve problems, analyse

information, and take decisions. One of the solutions

is to provide to civil servants blended learning

courses and self-teaching packages to acquire more

competencies and experiences.

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