The way public finances are organized in a country forms the basis for how local authorities run their activities in cities, towns and villages. While national governments have the responsibility to design and supervise a system that works, local authorities are challenged to use their often limited resources for delivering better local services.
In order for policy practitioners to better understand the fiscal aspects of decentralization and local governance, The Hague Academy for Local Governance is offering an open enrolment course on Fiscal Decentralization and Local Finance in The Hague from September 28 – October 9, 2015.
This course helps you in answering questions such as:
- How can spending responsibilities and revenue resources be best assigned to the different government layers, taking into account the country context?
- What are the responsibilities of national government in designing and supervising a system that works?
- How can sub-national governments be supported to increase local revenues and strengthen financial management?
- How can local authorities be held accountable by their citizens?
This training is designed for people who are responsible for the design and implementation of (fiscal) decentralisation processes, public sector reform programmes, public service delivery or financial management, and who work for national, regional or local government or donor and development organisations.
You will discuss the assignment of expenditure responsibilities and revenue sources, the design and implementation of intergovernmental transfers, financial accountability, gender budgeting and local government spending and monitoring. Country cases on intergovernmental transfers—among others from Bangladesh, Kenya and Tanzania— will be analysed. You will visit Dutch institutions amongst which the Dutch Ministry of Home Affairs and the Court of Audit of the Municipality of Rotterdam. This course will further help participants:
- assess and monitor fiscal decentralisation practices in your country;
- optimise the different sources of revenue, e.g. taxes, user fees and intergovernmental transfers;
- find effective financing structures and partnerships to accomplish most with limited resources;
- be able to use revenue and expenditure tools;
- increase your insight in financial management and fiscal accountability at the local level
After successful completion of the course you will receive a certificate of The Hague Academy for Local Governance.
François Vaillancourt is one of the key experts in this training course. He has been a professor in the Department of Economics at the Université de Montréal since 1976, is an expert on public policy issues and wrote several publications. He has consulted for various international organisations (World Bank, OECD, UNDP) and national organisations (Conseil and Office de la langue française du Québec, Statistics Canada, Finance Canada, Séguin Commission).
More information about this course is available at:
http://thehagueacademy.com/blog/2014/04/fiscal-decentralisation-local-finance/
