Functional Review of the Ministry of Education, Science and ...

Recommendation A.12: Gradually add, to key departments where this is currently lacking, IT
support staff familiar with the department’s area of responsibility.
Recommendation A.13: Prepare the new EMIS project using the standard professional information
system development approach.
Recommendation A.14: Prepare a strategic document on information services development.
As for the organizational aspect of the field of IT and data collection, see the section B.
Administrative and managerial culture
The organizational and administrative culture of the work at the MEST does not satisfy standard criteria.
For example, there are no minutes from meetings, no materials for comments before meetings.
Registration of documents is done just in the written form, not electronically. Meetings of management are
inevitable part of working life of any organization. But unprepared meetings are usually ineffective and in
fact a waste of time. There are well defined standard principles how to prepare and organize meetings to
be as effective as possible. Preparation of participants for meetings is one of important issues. A part of
this preparation is the study of materials that will be discussed at the meeting.
Well-organized mechanisms for document flow are essential. Organizations like the MEST work mainly
with documents. Therefore it is crucial to have a system of storing, administration and searching of
documents. An electronic registration of documents is a powerful tool supporting such a system.
The MEST has currently 9 departments 5 and 7 further units coordinated by the Permanent Secretary.
Some of departments are closely related (for example departments in the area of pre-university
education). The work of related departments needs to be closely coordinated because it is tightly
interlocked. It cannot be expected that the coordination of this type can be performed by the Permanent
Secretary only. EU-6 ministries use either coordinators for groups of departments or have a small number
of large departments.
Recommendation A.15: Prepare an internal regulation about submission of materials and
organization of meetings of the MEST’s management.
Recommendation A.16: Prepare and implement a project of electronic registration of documents.
Recommendation A.17: Introduce a system of coordination based on creating of the following 2
groups of related units:
Pre-university education group,
Higher education and R&D group,
Administration group,
Nominate a coordinator (called Deputy Permanent Secretary or Director General) for each of the groups).
As for the coordinator, there are 2 options:
the coordinator will be one of the heads of departments within the group,
2 new posts of Deputy Permanent Secretaries or Directors General will be created.
The coordinators will coordinate also agencies in the MEST’s portfolio working in the corresponding area.
(The list of all units assigned to single groups can be seen from the diagram in Section C.)
5 Besides Inspection Department.
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