Building a 'New Public Strategies Center': A Public Policy Partnership in Workforce Development Linking Arizona State University and the Moscow State University School of Public Affairs

The project achieved its most ambitious goal—the incubation of the Center for Strategic Innovation (TsSI in Russian), a public policy research institute at Moscow State University’s Faculty of Public Administration (MGU/FGU). The TsSI’s research activity has extended to projects well beyond the scope of the original partnership, including funded projects in the fields of education, e-governance, and public-private partnerships in social services.

The Melikian Center launched the project with a public policy research partnership seminar, conducted at ASU in 2006. This seminar led to reciprocal invitations of seminar presenters to participate in the annual MGU/FGU international conference on public administration in Moscow.

Critical to the success of the project was the development of a web-based workforce information system, modeled on a similar system at the University of Missouri-St. Louis Public Policy Research Center. The developer of that system, David Laslo, guided MGU consultant Sergey Borovoy through the development and deployment of a scalable system providing an interactive resource for regional businesses, job
seekers and analysts.

The project was unusually timely, with the TsSI coming on line at a time when the flourishing Russian economy and its federal budget surpluses created a variety of opportunities for federally funded Russian projects. The TsSI website documents the range of funded projects resulting in the new MGU Center. Many of those projects relate directly to workforce development, including funded projects on regional education. A company in Tula identified TsSI from its RISTR website before contacting TsSI to undertake a workforce analysis for the company—a testimony to the successful strategic design of the ASU-MGU partnership project.

ASU and MGU concluded the grant by publishing a volume outlining the development of the TsSI and collecting several of the analysis and policy papers produced there. This volume is available from the Melkian Center.