Networks and cities' news

The “soft” power of cross-sector governance 

Multi-sector governance needs to be backed by “soft power” both from top-down and bottom-up. When it comes to “teaching silos to dance” – or “dancing with silos” – several of the Roundtable participants pointed to the different power dynamics that tend to be put in motion when it comes to cross-sector coordination. In the city of Tallinn, Strategy Director Raido Roop explained that there is ongoing internal debate on whether the Strategic Management Office, officially mandated to coordinate the various departments under Tallinn’s long-term strategy, has too much or rather too little power. Some see benefit in granting more than soft powers to such a coordination body, to be able to enforce more policy coherence, while others are more cautious. In Jablonec nad Nisou, Deputy Mayor Lenka Opočenská highlighted that they are in the starting blocks of bringing people from across the city administration together around the same table. They are looking for the first positive results of this in order to motivate staff to start doing things in a new, more joint-up way.  Gabrovo’s mayor Tanya Hristova brought light to the need for perseverance when it comes to teaching silos to dance, illustrating the journey Gabrovo has taken over almost 10 years to become a recognised innovation player bringing together businesses, regional actors and the city administration. This journey has leaned on strong top-down commitment.

Use the leverage provided by EU projects

Mayor Tanya Hristova also highlighted how Gabrovo’s journey has been helped by involvement in EU projects ever since Bulgaria joined the EU. They provide a great context for strengthening both horizontal and vertical coordination. In Agios Dimitrios, deputy mayor Vasilis Zacharias also highlighted the benefit of being part of projects that help to bring the municipality closer to European standards of public administration. They are currently betting on digitalisation to improve both service delivery and collaboration between departments. 

Gaining trust from citizens

The director of URBACT, Teofil Gherca underlined the importance of getting citizens on board with sustainability transformations, including by localising the UN Sustainable Development Goals and showing concrete medium-term results. He further highlighted that local authorities often have high levels of trust from the public, and that Mayors often fare better than national politicians in this regard. Christian Hübel, Director of Strategy and Democracy in the host city Mannheim, suggested that politicians, the city administration and the urban community operate with different logics, and that by bringing them together under a shared vision, people start to eventually follow a similar direction.
 

“If people are not dancing, we need to change the music” said Pedro Norton de Matos, president of Braga’s strategic council for sustainable development. He highlighted that, learning from nature, our governance systems need a quantum leap from “me” to “we” and by forgetting that there is a “them”. 

Following this Mayor-level meeting in Mannheim, our network continued exploring the themes of governance styles and Storytelling as a tool to boost engagement among colleagues and citizens during two days of Core Network meeting.  It emerged from the workshops that one aspect of governance that needs to be further investigated and worked upon is collaboration between the national government and local authorities. It seems like the added value from both sides of such collaboration is not always clear, and that it can be hard to translate into practice. In our next occasion, we will definitely aim to have some national government representatives around the table! 

The “soft” power of cross-sector governance 

Multi-sector governance needs to be backed by “soft power” both from top-down and bottom-up. When it comes to “teaching silos to dance” – or “dancing with silos” – several of the Roundtable participants pointed to the different power dynamics that tend to be put in motion when it comes to cross-sector coordination. In the city of Tallinn, Strategy Director Raido Roop explained that there is ongoing internal debate on whether the Strategic Management Office, officially mandated to coordinate the various departments under Tallinn’s long-term strategy, has too much or rather too little power. Some see benefit in granting more than soft powers to such a coordination body, to be able to enforce more policy coherence, while others are more cautious. In Jablonec nad Nisou, Deputy Mayor Lenka Opočenská highlighted that they are in the starting blocks of bringing people from across the city administration together around the same table. They are looking for the first positive results of this in order to motivate staff to start doing things in a new, more joint-up way.  Gabrovo’s mayor Tanya Hristova brought light to the need for perseverance when it comes to teaching silos to dance, illustrating the journey Gabrovo has taken over almost 10 years to become a recognised innovation player bringing together businesses, regional actors and the city administration. This journey has leaned on strong top-down commitment.

Use the leverage provided by EU projects

Mayor Tanya Hristova also highlighted how Gabrovo’s journey has been helped by involvement in EU projects ever since Bulgaria joined the EU. They provide a great context for strengthening both horizontal and vertical coordination. In Agios Dimitrios, deputy mayor Vasilis Zacharias also highlighted the benefit of being part of projects that help to bring the municipality closer to European standards of public administration. They are currently betting on digitalisation to improve both service delivery and collaboration between departments. 

Gaining trust from citizens

The director of URBACT, Teofil Gherca underlined the importance of getting citizens on board with sustainability transformations, including by localising the UN Sustainable Development Goals and showing concrete medium-term results. He further highlighted that local authorities often have high levels of trust from the public, and that Mayors often fare better than national politicians in this regard. Christian Hübel, Director of Strategy and Democracy in the host city Mannheim, suggested that politicians, the city administration and the urban community operate with different logics, and that by bringing them together under a shared vision, people start to eventually follow a similar direction.
 

“If people are not dancing, we need to change the music” said Pedro Norton de Matos, president of Braga’s strategic council for sustainable development. He highlighted that, learning from nature, our governance systems need a quantum leap from “me” to “we” and by forgetting that there is a “them”. 

Following this Mayor-level meeting in Mannheim, our network continued exploring the themes of governance styles and Storytelling as a tool to boost engagement among colleagues and citizens during two days of Core Network meeting.  It emerged from the workshops that one aspect of governance that needs to be further investigated and worked upon is collaboration between the national government and local authorities. It seems like the added value from both sides of such collaboration is not always clear, and that it can be hard to translate into practice. In our next occasion, we will definitely aim to have some national government representatives around the table!