Finland Times

 

The final report of the OHRA Project was handed over to Prime Minister Alexander Stubb by State Secretary Olli-Pekka Heinonen of the Prime Minister's Office and State Secretary Martti Hetemäki of the Ministry of Finance on Friday. Photo Lehtikuva.

The government needs a strategic process consistently drawing upon facts and figures to secure resources and momentum for achieving real change.

 

The government’s agenda should list three to five major issues that political efforts and resources would focus on, said a proposal put forward by the joint project OHRA launched by the Ministry of Finance and the Prime Minister’s Office to look into the potential of developing the state governance framework.

 

A key proposal developed in the course of the project is a new type of strategic coherence to be pursued by the government, said the Government Communications Department in a press release.

 

Released on Friday, the final report of the OHRA Project was handed over to Prime Minister Alexander Stubb by State Secretary Olli-Pekka Heinonen of the Prime Minister’s Office and State Secretary Martti Hetemäki of the Ministry of Finance.

 

The ministry high officials talked to a state audit executive director during the programme. Photo Lehtikuva.

The proposals presented in the report are intended for the following government term. As a result, the government’s strategy would be formulated in two stages: when the government programme is prepared and immediately after when the government’s action plan is drafted.

 

The OHRA Project proposes that government programmes should be formulated in more general terms instead of defining detailed measures that will tie the hands of the government for its entire term.

 

Additionally, the number of various ‘strategic’ guidance documents separate from the government’s action plan would be drastically reduced during the next government term.

 

It has been proposed that an action plan should be presented to parliament in the form of a report subject to annual review.

 

The government’s action plan would be completed in August 2015 – at the same time as the 2016 draft budget – and presented to parliament as a report. The government would review both the action plan and the General Government Fiscal Plan annually in the spring.

 

At the public servant level, the action plan process would be owned by a general secretariat in charge of coordinating the preparations led by the state secretary to the prime minister in collaboration with the state secretary at the Ministry of Finance as outlined in the report.

 

The OHRA Project was launched by Henna Virkkunen, minister of public administration and local government, in November 2013 as part of the central government reform project.

 

The project aimed at reinforcing strategic guidance by the government; coordinating the direction of policies, the legislative process and allocation of resources; and consolidating the factual basis for support and capacity for action by these functions.

 

Paula Risikko, minister of transport and communications and local government, had established an implementation committee to translate the proposals into concrete actions, said the release.