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The findings from the monitoring of the public administration reform were presented at the conference, with a focus on civil society and its role in monitoring and supporting public administration reforms in the Republic of Macedonia and its path to the EU. Key stakeholders gathered from CSOs, independent experts and institutions gathered in one place in order to foster dialogue for creating better administration. The conference served to present and discuss the first National Report on the monitoring of PAR. The conference was divided into two panels. Discussion in the priority areas of public administration: Strategic framework; Public service and human resources management; Public finance management.

Discussing on the first panel were Malinka Ristevska-Jordanova from EPI and WeBER researcher Aleksandra Ivanovska, the Minister of Information Society and Administration Mr. Damjan Mancevski, professor Dragan Gocevski from the Faculty of Law "Iustinianus Primus", as well as Neda Maleska from the Center for Change Management.

Discussion in the priority areas of public administration: Policy making and coordination; Responsibility, Accountability and Transparency; Providing services and ICT support to the administration. Discussing on the second panel were Angel Mojsovski, WeBER researcher, Kristina Dimovska from the Ministry of Information Society and Administration, Aleksandar Nikolov from the ZENIT Association, and Misha Popovic from the Institute for Democracy "Societas Civilis" – Skopje.

The event was moderated by the journalist Vasko Popetrevski.

The motive behind the meeting was the presentation of a comprehensive report on the state of public administration in BiH – State PAR Monitor 2017/2018. The report was written pursuant to a year-long research and monitoring of PAR within the scope of WeBER Project, the first regional civil society project monitoring this process in the Western Balkans.

Vedrana Faladžić, from the Public Administration Reform Coordinator’s Office (PARCO BiH) and Lejla Ramić Mesihović, Director of the Foreign Policy initiative BH (FPI BH) have discussed on what is the significance of monitoring of the public administration reform by the civil society.

The State PAR Monitor for BiH was presented by Ms Anida Šabanović, FPI BH researcher. After the presentation, there was a serious discussion in which many discussants took part. Along with the members of the civil society organizations who are members of the NWG, Mr Nedžib Delić, head of the PARCO Operative Unit, Elvira Mujkić, PAR expert, Davor Vuletić, President of the FPI BH Assembly, and Mr Bojan Kovačević  from the Business Development Agency EDA from Banja Luka.

This event has gathered representatives of civil society, public administration, media and PAR experts.

*NWG is a consultative mechanism within a ste between representatives of civil society and relevant state authorities in creation and monitoring of the PAR process in Western Balkan countries. NWGs were established in each of these countries as a part of a wider regional WeBER platform.

After performing the first monitoring exercise, WeBER research team revealed findings and data related to the present levels of openness, transparency, accountability, and meritocracy of the Western Balkans’ administrations at the meeting organised in the premises of the DG NEAR. Interested officials of the European Commission had opportunity to acquire first-hand insights of the monitoring process and methodology, learn about research results in all six public administration reform (PAR) areas and ask country-specific questions in order to obtain evidence-informed findings necessary for their future communication efforts towards the Western Balkan countries.

Following the DG NEAR meeting, Regional PAR Monitor 2017/2018 was presented at the Policy Dialogue A Balkan perspective on Public Administration Reform: Who is moving forward and who is falling behind? organised by Brussels-based WeBER partner organisation, EPC. The Policy Dialogue was moderated by EPC Senior Policy Analyst, Corina Stratulat, and was attended by EPC members, EU officials and media. It explored the project findings in more detail, and answered the following questions: How does each country’s public administration compare to the others? What examples of good and bad practice can be found throughout the region? Where are the frontrunners lagging behind, and why? What should the Balkan countries do to further advance reform and how should the EU help?

The results show considerable discrepancies between countries and reveal that the “frontrunners” are not always at the front in all the different aspects of PAR. If you are interested in learning more about the results of the WeBER monitoring, please read the Executive Summary available here or take a look at the graphically presented results in the PAR Scoreboard available here.

25-26 September 2018 – The Conference was the first in what intends to become a series of biennial regional conferences focusing on civil society’s role in monitoring and supporting PAR in the context of the region’s EU path. Its purpose was to enhance and broaden the dialogue on creating and implementing inclusive and transparent policies that take into account citizens’ needs. On this occasion, Milena Lazarević, CEP Programme Director and WeBER Project Manager, and Miloš Đinđić, CEP Programme Manager and WeBER Lead Researcher, presented the draft Regional PAR Monitor Report, based on the results of PAR monitoring performed in each WB country within WeBER.

The key panellists at the conference included Myriam Ferran, Director for Strategy and Turkey in the European Commission's Directorate-General for Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations (DG NEAR), Dicky Methorst, the First Secretary in the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Gregor Virant, former Minister of Public Administration in the Republic of Slovenia, Heiki Loot, Secretary of State in the Government Office of Estonia,  Majlinda Bregu, prominent Albanian politician and the next Secretary General of the Regional Cooperation Council (RCC), and many others. They highlighted the importance of regional cooperation and constructive PAR dialogue between civil society and the state, in light of the ongoing EU accession process of the Western Balkan countries.

Highlights from the conference

As one of the most notable achievements, WeBER has shown that civil society does not need to be perceived by the government as an external threat, but rather as a constructive partner in PAR policy. "WeBER builds bridges and trust between civil society organisations that represent the citizens of the Western Balkan countries, and the governments, in order to provide better services for citizens, better use of taxpayers' money and a better quality of everyday life," Myriam Ferran said at the conference.

The EU has included PAR among the fundamental reform areas that enable a progressive transformation of the state and society. To that end, Virant emphasised that the EU is becoming more demanding in the accession process when it comes to public administration reform. Since the outcomes of PAR influence the daily lives of citizens, it is important that citizens are in the focus of reform activities. Milena Lazarević stated: "We think that it is necessary for governments to hear these messages, because we can have serious problems if those problems we point out are not solved. We will not only have problems in functioning as EU member states, but citizens will also punish those same politicians, if they fail to act responsibly and implement the needed administrative reforms.". She added that the main focus of the EU was no longer the mere adoption of laws and strategies, but increasingly their application in practice, quality of service delivery, actual openness and transparency of the administration and involvement of public in policy-making.” EU membership does not per se ensure that the state will function perfectly and therefore civil society should be the driving force for continuing reforms even after we enter the EU," Lazarević emphasised.

Moreover, countries in the Western Balkan region are all reforming their administrations within the accession process and there is strong potential for mutual learning and experience exchange: “Regional cooperation is not a substitute for EU membership, but if the region does not work together in all fields, the road to the EU will be harder and longer”, Bregu warned.

Heiki Loot shared a good example of Estonia’s public administration reform case. “The key to the sucessful PAR is: good-quality people in key places with autonomy to lead the reform, plus new technologies.”

Methorst pointed out that although EU officials know the benefits from EU enlargement to the Western Balkans, it is a challenge to convince EU citizens. “That is why WeBER is very important”, said Methorst, “measuring PAR progress in the Western Balkans through individually developed indicators, allowing for detailed monitoring of how far countries have advanced on their paths to the EU membership.”

A special part of the Conference was dedicated to PAR monitoring projects of local civil society organisations, grantees of the WeBER Small Grant Facility. The Small Grant Facility was launched with the goal to enable local watchdog and grassroots organisations and media to work on local PAR issues.

The final remarks were delivered by Miloš Đinđić and Simonida Kacarska, Director of the European Policy Institute (EPI). Kacarska warned that countries of the region are still facing a challenge when it comes to including additional institutional actors in the PAR process, beyond Ministries for public administration. “Political will matters, but systematic solutions are needed”, Kacarska highlighted. They both concluded that WeBER does not end with this conference, and that civil society in the Western Balkans will continue to demand a better and more efficient public administration, tailored to the citizens’ needs.

22 August 2018 – The conclusions of the Public Administration Reform (PAR) Special Group (SG) meeting, held on 29 and 30 May in Belgrade, were published on the website of the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government of the Republic of Serbia. Meeting conclusions can be downloaded here.

Public Administration Reform Special Groups have been established in all Western Balkan (WB) countries, as part of the structure responsible for monitoring the implementation of the Stabilisation and Association Agreement. Meetings of these groups represent a policy dialogue between representatives of the European Commission and the Government of the Republic of Serbia in charge of public administration reform. In Serbia, the first SG meeting was held in 2014,  while meeting conclusions were published for the first time this year.

Reaching an agreement with key PAR authorities  in each of the  WB countries on a uniform practice of publishing the agenda and minutes of each PAR SG meeting is one of the recommendations given to the European Commission by Milena Lazarević, Programme Director of the European Policy Centre, Belgrade (CEP), and Korina Stratulat, Senior Policy Analyst at the European Policy Centre, Brussels (EPC), as part of the policy brief ”Balkan Enlargement and the Politics of Civic Pressure: The Case of the Public Administration Reform Sector”. The brief was published within the framework of the WeBER Project.

In addition to that, in April 2017, we have initiated the participation of civil society organisations (CSOs) in the work of the PAR SG in the WB by organising consultative meetings with CSO representatives.

In October 2017, Montenegro published the conclusions from the session of the SG held in that country. You can download the conclusions from that session here.

The civil service shapes the face of any government. It is the professional body of government employees that have a special role in serving the public interest by advising on the development of policies and putting them into practice. Within this group, there is an even smaller core that forms the link between the civil service and the democratically elected cabinet of ministers: this is the senior civil service (SCS). Its role is special: not only does it execute government policies and advise ministers on how to convert the government’s political programme into concrete actions, it must also safeguard the core mission of the state, which is independent of the government in office. The professionalism of senior civil servants in managing government affairs is therefore crucial to a government’s success or failure. Ministers are politically mandated to devise policies and run the ministry, while senior civil servants simultaneously serve the government in office and the public interest in general. A clear definition of responsibilities is needed to provide optimal conditions for all to perform their respective functions. This means there are responsibilities that only politically mandated officials can assume, such as making value judgements about policy needs, and others that can be best fulfilled by professional civil servants, for instance deciding the most effective way to provide a service or make the government function more efficiently.

This paper examines civil service professionalisation in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro and Serbia. The paper was developed by SIGMA team, and we are proud that Milena Lazarević, WeBER Project Manager and European Policy Centre – CEP Programme Director and Vladimir Mihajlović, Researcher from CEP and expert for public administration provided feedback during various phases of this paper’s development.

This paper is available at the following link: https://bit.ly/2MsJ2XF 

The meeting evolved around three themes: ongoing research and monitoring activities of the WeBER research team; research and results of the work done by WeBER platform members; activities and future plans of the MISA.

The meeting was opened by Simonida Kacarska, director of EPI, underlining the importance of the project and the conducting of the surveys, which encompass three perspectives of our society – CSO, citizens and civil servants. The surveys guided by the same methodology have been conducted on a regional level and as such represent a first of their kind.  In continuation, Aleksandra Ivanovska, researcher in EPI, presented the preliminary results of the survey of civil servants and the survey of CSO representatives. The surveys have raised great interest, especially those focusing on the opinions of the civil servants which aimed to grasp the thoughts of the civil servants on the situation in the public sector regarding status of senior civil servants, remuneration, recruitment, and integrity. Following, Angel Mojsovski researcher in EPI presented the situation in Macedonia regarding the accountability of state administration bodies and the status and quality of the public services which are provided. He underlined that in the past 9 months the institutions have improved their practices by publishing relevant documents such as budgets, organigrams and annual reports but still do not have the habit of publishing ex-ante and ex-post analyses as well as relevant policy analyses. When it comes to service delivery, Mojsovski presented the results of the survey of the opinions of the public regarding administrative services, also underlining that on a regional level the highest rate of awareness for the existence of e-services has been observed in Macedonia (53%). During the second session, Gordana Stefkovska Veljanovska from the Center for Change Management, WEBER platform member presented their work in the area of administrative and legal protection of citizens and public administration employees as well as their report on the work of the commissions of second instance and administrative courts

Next, Aleksandar Nikolov from Association Zenith, Weber grantee, quite connected with the topic that was tackled by Mojsovski, presented the opinion of citizens regarding the provision of services but on a local level, by the municipality of Skopje.

Kristina Dimovska, representative of MISA, closed the session by elaborating on the future endeavours of the Ministry, especially in the area of provision of e-services, openness and transparency.