PROJECT METHODOLOGIES IN LOCAL GOVERNMENTS

Abstract

In Ukraine, the changes concerning territorial communities and their development strategies are taking place at the legislative level. In accordance with this, local governments need to change the approach to their development, since there should be a long-term effect that can be monitored as well as its effectiveness evaluated. Project management, which is implemented by various methodologies, should be used to implement the development strategy of a particular territorial community. The project approach shows its effectiveness in different areas. At the same time, it is less represented in local government. The research studies the factors influencing the low level of project activities implementation in local governments in Ukraine. The case study of implementation of the project approach in the municipality of Sumy city while developing and implementing the Sumy City Development Strategy until 2030 is considered. General problems that arise during the project methodologies implementation in local governments and proposals for leveling them are identified. The research purpose is to analyze the use of project methodologies in local governments while creating development strategy for a territorial community. Nowadays, the requirements for the creation of development strategies of territorial communities have been adopted at the legislative level. These requirements should contain new criteria (e.g.: performance indicators), which were not mandatory before, and the officials often ignored them. Nowadays the existing approaches to strategy creation, and most importantly, its implementation, should be significantly revised, including reorientation from a short-term effect to a long-term one. In order this activity (development strategies creation) to be as effective as possible, it should be expedient for local governments to use project methodologies. The problem that we point out in the research is that there is a certain difficulty in project methodologies implementation in local governments while creating the development strategy for a territorial community.