2016•10•31     Guimarães

31 October 2016 marked the beginning of the integrated training program of the Support Project for the Improvement of the Quality and Proximity of Public Services in PALOP Countries and Timor-Leste (Projeto de Apoio à Melhoria da Qualidade e da Proximidade dos Serviços Públicos nos PALOP e Timor-Leste). This training, in partnership with the University of Minho and which is taking place at its premises, is funded by the European Union and executed and co-funded by Camões, I.P., while technical supervision is provided by the Agency for Administrative Modernization, I. P. under the 10th European Development Fund. UNU-EGOV supports as well the project.

This integrated training involves 24 trainees from PALOP Countries and Timor-Leste, who will take a leadership role in the implementation of the respective national projects on the domain of Electronic Governance (EGOV) and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), as well as during the development of the respective National Action Plans. The trainees are enrolled in training sessions complemented by Seminars delivered by people from academia and public administration on themes related with the training and relevant case studies; Seminars organized by the United Nations University Operating-Unit on Policy-Driven Electronic Governance (UNU-EGOV); and “Dinner Conversations”, which take place once a week. In the latter, the trainees and the academic staff are together on a social dinner and are joined by an invited keynote speaker.

The first of these “Dinner Conversations” took place on 2 November and was linked with the formal beginning of the training program. It was attended by the Vice-Rector of the University of Minho, Prof. Rui Vieira de Castro, the Head ad interim of UNU-EGOV, Luís Soares Barbosa, the Coordinator of PASP, Emanuel Pereira, and the Councillor of Guimarães Municipality, Ricardo Costa.

This is a PASP/PALOP-TL initiative together with the University of Minho through UMinho-EGOV, with the support of UNU-EGOV, and highly valuable for the partner countries, particularly the ones which will benefit from a training that will be formalized by the University of Minho as a postgraduate course. The course will feature international credits (ECTS) that can be used for the academic training of each participant if so they wish.