Ing. Mgr. Tomáš Černěnko, PhD.

Participation in conducting (leading) the most important research projects or art projects over the last six years

APVV - Innovations in Local Government Budgeting, researcher; Goal: Budgeting of local governments is a field which attracted huge attention recently. This fact is linked not only to decentralization trends (e.g. implementation of various tools of fiscal decentralization), but also to recent experience with impacts of global financial crisis that was a serious challenge for both central governments and local governments at municipal as well as regional level. However, local budgets cannot be understood as purely economic tools. On contrary, they are also programs that show values and priorities of relevant local governments. On this matter it is no surprise that in this field one can identify various innovations of both economic and broader socio-political nature. Our research intention is associated with three clear innovations that has affected budgeting of local governments in all economically developed countries, namely performance budgeting, gender (sensitive) budgeting, and participatory budgeting. Although reasons of their implementation as well as their economic-political nature are different, each of them aims to improve budgeting processes, and they should bring some certain positive effects in the field of public service delivery. Unfortunately, no comprehensive analysis aimed at these innovations as well as their impacts has been done in Slovakia. Therefore, our main research objective is to fill in this research gap. On one hand, we want to find out how much they are being used, on the other hand, we want to analyse models of their use drivers and barriers of their implementation, as well as both intended and unintended outcomes. Fur this purposes interdisciplinary research team will use research tools of desk research and also field research. The research team expects to bring no only new knowledge in regard to use of these budgeting innovations in practice of the local governments, but it has also an ambition to contribute significantly to present international scientific discourse in this field. The project consortium consists of four universities, namely Comenius University in Bratislava, University of Economics in Bratislava, Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica, and University of SS. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava. However, it is open for cooperation with other Slovak and international partners (institutional as well as individual).

VEGA - Generational exchange and provision of public services and administration; Public administration and public sector organizations are increasingly faced with the problem of filling vacant job positions with suitable candidates. This is reflected in the lower capacity of the offices and thus the extension of the equipment periods, a smaller amount of provided public services or their lower quality. However, in the long term, this may lead to the collapse of part of the public administration or public services. The current debate within the given issue in Slovakia focuses primarily on the influence of wages on the interest in working in the public sector. The aim of the presented project is to examine this problem from several points of view, including the discrepancy between the offered job positions and the expectations of graduates of public administration and related fields of study, the analysis of relevant policies and the outlook for the future.

VEGA - Economy of Joint Provision of Competences, project leader deputy; The problem of the fragmentation of the administration has been present in the Slovak administration science since the mid-1990s. From initial considerations of if and how fragmentation can be eliminated through municipalism or amalgamization, through the search for the optimal size of municipal administrative units to the measure of effectiveness of the system of territorial self-government. In addition to this debate, a number of changes have happened that allow us to be more courageous in search of an efficient and cost-efficient public administration. E-government has been able to provide the right services almost continuously, and makes administration ubiquitous. The aim of our project is to propose categories of competencies and related economic standards for each level and spatial unit of administration based on an analysis of the economic aspects of the current configuration of competence exercises by the self-government (either directly or through joint municipal authorities).

VEGA - Performance management in Local government, project leader deputy; The main purpose of the project is to bring scientific outputs on the topics of performance management, governance and networks, which will contain not only theoretical aspects of these phenomena, but will also bring examples of their practical use in the conditions of Slovak governments. The presented project omits the indirect approach applied so far in Slovak conditions. It consisted of monitoring "hard" indicators based on operational data of local governments or statistical data. The main benefit of the project is therefore its focus on consumers and producers of these services, whose attitudes will be explored in the form of field research. It will take place in 10 to 15 cities in the Slovak Republic.

VEGA - Optimal Local Government Unit - A Competent and Efficient Publis Administrato, project leader deputy; The social processes for which self-government is a component of public administration in its organizational, competence and spatial structure have changed. Not only the processes but also the actors have changed. The "subordinate" elements became partners, clients. Today, development processes are built on a partnership of several actors of different sizes, focus and operating at different levels. The role of public administration has shifted from the role of initiator to the role of coordinator. This puts her in a position where she must be a partner and institution bigger and stronger than herself. In order not to move from a coordinator to a controlled position, it must be strong enough, but today's fragmented administrative structure does not have such strength. Territorial self-government has competencies, but is unable to use and secure them due to insufficient strength or insufficient resources. In addition, the portfolio of available competencies in combination with insufficient strength does not allow the local government to react sufficiently vigorously to the changes that will occur.