In February, CoST Ukraine provided a training event for government officials, in partnership with the World Bank. The event was opened by Minister of Infrastructure Volodymyr Omelyan and aimed to overcome perceptions that CoST might be a punitive system for government employees. There were representatives from 24 regional road authorities and Ukravtodor, the central office, in attendance.

Prior to CoST’s intervention, reporting on public infrastructure delivery in Ukraine was undertaken but varied from region to region due to a lack of central structure and formal requirements. The information also only showed how much was spent, without providing reasons for the expenditure. As such, it was difficult to provide detailed analysis in order to monitor efficient delivery.

Presentations from CoST Ukraine’s Multi-Stakeholder Group highlighted that data in Ukraine is in fact already relatively open. The value of CoST is to enable the government to put in place systems that organise the information and support its management and analysis.

The workshop took a very consultative approach, with advice and insights from government officials enabling CoST Ukraine to develop a disclosure template that will be easy for officials to complete and that can be analysed efficiently. A disclosure manual and template have now been approved by the CoST Ukraine Multi-Stakeholder Group and Ministry of Infrastructure to provide it with a legal status. All data will be saved on the Ministry’s server and uploaded to E-DATA to make it publicly available with immediate effect.

CoST Ukraine has begun its disclosure process and the refined template is in production so that government officials can disclose the relevant data as easily as possible. The CoST Ukraine Assurance Team will be trained on the system in May, with the official assurance process beginning shortly afterwards. The event reassured government representatives that CoST is a support, not a barrier, to their work and highlighted CoST Ukraine’s disclosure and assurance processes as a useful management tool for government officials. To find out more about CoST Ukraine, please visit their website.