Governors and senior officials from the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq (KRG) today joined National School representatives and Whitehall officials at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to mark a new phase in a skills development project for the region.

The event is part of a two week visit to the UK by the governors of the Erbil, Dohuk and Suleimaniah - a scoping exercise for a long-term commitment to professionalising public administration in Kurdistan.

The National School’s guests will visit Parliament and Whitehall departments, including the Cabinet and Scotland Offices to learn more about UK public administration. Besides professional functions such as human resources, finance, and change management, the itinerary covers broader themes including the principles of neutrality, parliamentary systems, and central government reform and transformation.

Delegates will also see first hand the ways in which policy is delivered at local authority level through visits to Oxford City Council and North Yorkshire County Council.

The project – funded by the KRG and delivered by the National School – will be designed to raise the skills of Kurdish officials working in ministries and at local level in governorates, with the aim of eventually establishing a civil service college in the Kurdistan Region that could be used to train civil servants from all parts of Iraq. The National School is already delivering training in auditing and quality assurance for more than 30 of the KRG’s most senior civil servants.

Welcoming the delegation, National School of Government Principal and Chief Executive Rod Clark commented: “I am delighted that the KRG has chosen us to work with them on this exciting project, not least because it means we can continue the good work we have undertaken together in recent years.”

Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, KRG’s High Representative to the UK, said: “KRG has made a successful transition from its beginnings in 1992 but we recognise we need to do more to reach international standards of governance. With the success of the training the National School provided to the senior civil servants in the KRG’s ministries, it was Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani’s vision that the governorates should also benefit from the British experience of transparency, good governance and management.”

She continued: “The extension of our work with the National School to this new phase is a sign of the strengthening relationship between Britain and Kurdistan Region in Iraq and an example of how both sides can learn from one another.”

The National School of Government’s International Consultancy has worked with more than 80 countries from around the world to build public service organisations and provide their staff with the skills needed to make organisational improvements.