The practice of  citizens involvement in the process of formation, monitoring and evaluation of performance of the public budget has become one of the most important forms of cooperation of citizens and government. Of particular importance is acquiring in a digital form of government where the public use of data creates a solid platform for the modern type of "co-production" of public budgets. The concept of ‘co-production’ has become widely used in the study of public policy in general. Compared with the categories of "collaboration", "public involvement" this concept has expanded understanding of the cycle of public policies affecting the problem of political designs, governance of public policies, the joint formulation and implementation of public values. Modern budgeting based on cooperation transforms designs of budgetary policy, accountability systems, processes of identifying public values ​​and others. Ensure citizen-oriented data relating to the budget here gets particular importance, and share learning of citizens and government for inclusive budget process becomes main requisite for successful collaboration. There is the difference in using ‘co-production’ between democratic and mixed political regimes with statist direction. Co-production is a new stance for democratic public policy, but in statist regimes with weak civil society co-production can be used more instrumentally for legitimizing political regimes. But here, the co-production institutions have a dual effect. The paper analyzes the Russian practice of "budget for the citizens" in the mixed (hybrid) regimes, introduced in 2013 at the federal and regional levels. Imitative institutions of “budget for the citizens” inure for legitimating regimes, but also they are good factors for mutual learning for cooperation. Transparency of budgetary data, its transformation for the citizens, and budgeting, initiated by citizens, affects on the imitative character of Russian designs for inclusive budgeting. Contradictions and obstacles for mutual learning citizens and government are explained by hybrid political regime, weak network feedbacks and limited citizen-oriented data collaboration.

In the late 1980s, Mexico begun different process of decentralization. At the beginning of the 2000s, these processes change the former extremely centralized political system into another open to political competition at all three level of government – federal, state and municipal. In the realm of social policy-making, this process of decentralization has apparently open more opportunities to innovation at state-level.

According to available data to date, several states have increase social spending in the last decade. Furthermore, some of them have implemented social policies that are considered to be original or innovative in Mexico, such as social programs for vulnerable groups (for instance, the elderly who lack contributive pensions and lone mothers). However, the analysis of this innovation policy process at subnational level is has been barely analyzed in developing countries, such as Mexico to date. Among other lines of investigation related to this topic, some queries remain answered. This work focuses in the following queries: After three decades of decentralization in Mexico, what conditions, causal mechanisms and different modes of social policy innovations can be identified at state level? To answer this queries, this paper look at the process that lead to the implementation of two social programs that are considered to be innovative in the Mexican context: conditional and unconditional cash transfers for vulnerable groups (lone mothers and elderly people with a contributory pension).

This papers look at some factors, such as the political electoral contexts and fiscal resources of states, as well as the role of the arrival of new political actors, to explain the conditions and main determinants that lead to the implementation of innovative social programs at state level in Mexico.

The article presents an approach to the definition of governance innovations as mechanisms of enhancing the efficiency and goal orientation of public administration. The essence of governance innovations in the contemporary conditions of the permanent variability of the difficult predicted external environment is disclosed.

Innovations in governance are brand new approaches to accepting administrative decisions for the purposes of achieving planned results while associated costs minimizing and social benefits maximization.

It is proved that the developing countries transition forward the way of sustainable development is closely connected to the government's readiness and willingness to generate targeted innovative ideas, as well as the level of public confidence in such creativity in management and policy making has been increased.

On the example of crisis overcoming Ukraine, authors trace the direct connection between the increasing of innovativeness in the strategic decision making and the alignment of imbalances in the socio-ecological-economic development of territories.

Along with the theoretical basis of this hypothesis, it has been visualized by the example of modern Ukraine. A historic stage of this country development in the period of post-crisis reconstruction (2013 – 2016) is considered. In order to align and increase the rates of economic and social development, the government has decided to apply a series of innovative measures to solve critical problems which delay the progressive development of the state. Such measures included the reforming of the social security system, its financial base, increasing of social and corporate responsibility of citizens and their involvement in governance processes. By virtue of non-linearity and weak scrutiny, those measures were not perceived by the population almost positively. However, each period of innovative methods of territorial development management in Ukraine introduction was marked by a scope of positive results of and concomitant systemic effects, which are disclosed in the article. Methodical approaches to their implementation are described; acceptable approaches to the innovation-oriented policy making for purposes of sustainable development of developing country are generalized.

It is concluded that the implementation of governance innovations is the only way to commit evolutionary transition to a new economic structure, which complies with the concepts of sustainable long-term development of territories and states generally.

Over the years, Metropolitan Regions (MRs) have accumulated social dilemmas and public policy deficits, especially after the 1988 decentralization process of municipalist bias.The Metropolitan Regions in Brazil have difficulties in promoting cooperative collective actions (GARSON, 2009). Due to this, municipalities use innovative institutional arrangements to implement their public policies, such as Public Consortia, which are public or private institutions, through which political actors at the municipal, state or federal level (bordering Or not), decide to cooperate with each other to solve problems of common interest and in specific areas, with the objective of meeting the local demands (ABRÚCIO; SOARES, 2001; CRUZ, 2002; SPINK, 2005; CALDAS, 2007). Since the promulgation of the Consortia Law in 2005, this modality has spread among the most varied Brazilian locations, and in the Metropolitan Regions the consortiums have proved to be an alternative for the implementation of sectoral public policies. The Public Consortia are considered as an innovation in the format of Brazilian intergovernmental relations and the objective of this article is to demonstrate the aspects that led to its diffusion after the law of consortia in 2005. For the demonstration of the factors that explain this diffusion were used the postulates of Theory of Diffusion proposed by Rogers (2003), who identified five attributes for the diffusion of innovation, are: relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, observability and trialability. The purpose of this article was to identify the evolution of the formation of consortia in MRs categorized by nature of the purpose, followed by the characterization of the consortium municipalities, highlighting the public policy implemented in the consortium, in its criteria of compatibility, complexity, observation And sorting, as well as relative advantages. Logistic regression is used to obtain evidence that leads to the trend of adoption of public consortia as an institutional innovation. Therefore, the dependent variable is the existence of a consortium in the municipality, and as independent variables secondary data that characterize the consortium municipalities. As a result, it was noticed that the Metropolitan Regions that joined the consortium formation did so through the perspective of improving the implementation of sectoral policies, this is evident from the results of the specific public policy. Public consortia with greater accessions focus on health and development policies, with emphasis on basic sanitation. As there is no possibility of testing before the consortia adoption, the trialability dimension was discarded in that article. After the Consortium Law, the complexity of implementation was reduced, favoring the adoption of innovation, so the promulgation of this law was fundamental for the diffusion of Public Consortia. The rapid adoption by other municipalities was creating institutional support so that, especially in the health sector, this model of intergovernmental arrangement could be diffused. In addition, the dilemma of cooperation in MRs combined with the benefits observed with the consortia were factors that led to the diffusion of the consortia.
 

Public procurement of innovation (PPI), and its antecedent public technology procurement (PTP), introduced by Charles Edquist since late 1990s as a novel promising demand-side innovation policy instrument is a new wave of public procurement reform, being implemented in European countries for the last decade. The escalating attention to this policy instrument stems from its considerable share in GDP and availability to governments, despite the many barriers against the implementation and success.

While public sector of developing countries attempts to incorporate technology transfer as an essential and incentivizing element of public tenders with foreign technology owners, it seems that many of such procurements remain arguable if a real technology transfer has been occurred. In this regard, although PPI literature has been grown up based on the needs of developed countries for development of cutting-edge technologies and innovations, and not technology transfer as in the case of the developing or under-developed world, the recent practice of Iranian oil industry has shown the possibility of such learning and adoption from PPI. The focus of the present paper is on the application of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) in selection of tenderers based on their technological capabilities and also monitoring of technology transfer to local bid winners during the implementation of contracts. This suggests a solution for one of the recent challenges of PPI practice in the developed world, and also for one of the classic problems in the area of technology transfer for developing countries.

To put an end to unrealized technology transfers during foreign contracts, Iranian Oil Ministry recently attempted to, at first, define ten groups of strategic equipment and goods (needs and targets in public procurement), and then, to set up third-party Technological Evaluation Committees for the purpose of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of the aspects and extent of technology transfer realized. The evaluation model was derived from prominent frameworks of Technology Readiness Levels (TRL), Manufacturing Readiness Levels (MRL) and Corporate Readiness Levels (CRL) of NASA and DOA, as stressed in the literature as the established sources and experiences. The evaluation model was transformed into three questionnaires (covered more than 600 questions) fulfilled by Technological Evaluation Committee members via site-visit of tenderers, meetings and review of evidences.

The results indicate that there are common barriers to both successful technology transfer in public procurement of developing countries and successful public procurement of innovation (PPI) of developed countries. These include monitoring and evaluation challenges, risk-aversion of public managers, legal constraints hampering collaboration of public body and suppliers and also relaxation of new contracts for the purpose of real technology transfer, and determination of the success of a technology transfer to be linked with payments and clearances. Not only PPI of developed world was able to address technology transfer issue of a developing country, the new practice of Iran in monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of tenderers for technology transfer could even answer some recent questions and challenges of European countries within the area of PPI, e.x. how to determine tender winner and innovation development success.

Contractual Health Services Performance Agreements for Responsive Health Systems: From Conception to Implementation in the Case of Qatar

Fadi El-Jardali

Nour Ataya

Diana Jamal

Background

Despite their use worldwide, strategy-based performance management is limited in the Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR). Experience on the process of developing and implementing performance management initiatives is limited in countries from the EMR. Experience on the process of developing and implementing national hospital performance measurement was published from Lebanon. However, limited information is available on the evolution and the impact of this initiative in regulating the health sector and enhancing accountability.

Objective

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first experience from the EMR to report on the use of a performance management tool that aligns strategies, performance measurement, and accountability. This paper discusses 1) the selection, development, and implementation of standardized indicators across all healthcare providers and 2) lessons learned for national scale-up of performance measurement activities.

Design

Mixed-methods including tools development and pilot-testing, guided by performance management cycle with a focus on knowledge translation and key principles: feasibility; mandatory participation; participatory approach through Steering Committee.

Public, private, and semi-governmental hospitals, primary healthcare centers and polyclinics participated in this initiative. Steps through which data was collected and utilized included: 1) Semi-structured interviews; (2) Review of 4,982 indicators; (3) Delphi technique for selecting indicators with >80% agreement on importance and >60% agreement on feasibility; (4) Capacity-building of providers and Ministry staff and two-month pilot assessed by questionnaire with indicators scoring  >3 considered valid, reliable, and feasible; and (5) One-year Grace Period assessed by questionnaire.

Results

The developed contracts mandate reporting 25 hospital and 15 primary healthcare indicators to the regulator, which delivers confidential benchmarking reports to providers. Scorecards were discussed with the regulator for evidence-informed policymaking. The approach uncovered system-related challenges and learning for public and private sectors: Providers commended the participatory approach (82%) and indicated that contracts enabled collecting valid and timely data (64%) and improved healthcare quality (55%).

Conclusion

This paper presents the methods and results of a performance management initiative from Qatar and discusses the valuable lessons of this approach. Qatar experience suggests that the development and use of strategy-based scorecards in contractual agreements with private and public providers can be useful to all health system stakeholders, despite their mandatory nature, if clear principles are applied early on: focus on feasibility and participative consensus-based approach to decision-making.