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Today, 3 August 2017, during the ‘CEC and CCET Activity under the Monitors’ Magnifier. 2016 Retrospective’ round table, Promo-LEX Association presented the Report assessing the activities performed by the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) and by the Center for Continuous Electoral Training (CCET)on the basis of their Strategic Plans.

The experts identified 37 activities CEC planned to perform in2016. The analysis of CEC Strategic Plan shows that CEC managed to perform fully 62.2% of all the planned activities and 16.2% of them – partially. As for 8.1% of the activities – their measures of implementation were insignificant, while 13.5% of the activities were not performed.

On the basis of CEC Activity Report and the 2016 Action Plan, the Report presented by Promo-LEX lists the following activities as the most important: conducting the feasibility study on the introduction of remote voting, development of ‘Elections’ SAIS, initiating the automated inter-institutional data exchange, training the electoral officials, establishing the prerequisites to increase the access of people with disabilities to the electoral process, training the interested subjects concerning the political parties and election campaigns funding, adjusting the internal regulatory framework of the institution to the new provisions of the law.

As far as 2016 CEC backlogs are concerned, the experts discussed about the activities that had to ensure the improvement of the electoral legal framework (including the organization of elections abroad, the motivation and reward of electoral officials, etc.), financial control of political parties activity, amendment of the staff lists of the institution, increase of the decisional transparency and credibility of electoral bodies, legalizing the mechanisms for the full implementation of ‘Elections’ SAIS.

The 2016 Action Plan of CCET contained 34 activities. The experts found that 41.2% of the planned activities were performed fully, and 11.8% – partially. They assessed 8.8% of the activities as formulated ambiguously, and 38.2% – as not performed.

Promo-LEX experts say that CCET made important achievements in the following areas: improving professional skills and knowledge of the staff involved in the electoral process, re-updating the training curricula to the needs of the target groups, building the capacity to develop training modules for CCET trainers, voters’ awareness-raising by organizing electoral information and education campaigns. At the same time, the experts note that the objectives CCET established for 2016-2019 are important for the electoral process, but too ambitious, considering its resources (human and financial).

Concurrently, the Promo-LEX assessment shows that CCET had backlogs as regards: the performance of activities that were meant to ensure the development of electoral training material portoflios to be delivered at national and international levels, promotion and improvement of the online training platform, increasing the visibility of the institution by establishing an ongoing collaboration with the media, development and maintenance of the collaboration with the subjects involved in the electoral process, including in non-election periods, institution’s reform, institutional capacity building, motivation and retention of the trainers involved in conducting the trainings.

Promo-LEX prepared the ‘Report on the Implementation of the 2016-2019 Strategic Plans of the Central Electoral Commission and of the Center for Continuous Electoral Training’ under the ‘Democracy, Transparency and Accountability’ Program with the financial support of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The opinions presented in the Report belong to the authors and do not necessarily reflect the donors’ view.