The meeting was opened by Brian Finn, Senior Adviser for Public Financial Management, saying that the results of the Monitoring Report showed that Serbia made significant improvements in comparison the previous assessment period, highlighting that in some PAR Areas Serbia is above the regional average, but it is still necessary to increase the implementation rate and fulfilment of obligations, to show dedication to reforms, realistically plan costs and carefully monitor achieved results. In the second session, Annika Uudelepp, SIGMA Senior Adviser for Strategy and Reform, and Primož Vehar, Senior Adviser for Service Delivery, focused on the state in civil service in Serbia and reflected on the international standards and good practice in achieving professional senior civil service. Moreover, they highlighted that the senior civil servants: are highly important for the good administration in every country. yet in Serbia they are often not selected in the open competition in Serbia, which weakens their role. leaves them in the state of insecurity for their position and therefore threatens to politicise their work... Finally, Vehar presented SIGMA's recommendations for getting more citizen-friendly service delivery, including less bureaucracy, more e-government and digitalisation.
Miloš Đinđić, WeBER Lead Researcher, presented PAR Monitor results from Serbia to the NWG members at the second part of the meeting.
.Milena Lazarević, WeBER Project Manager and CEP Programme Director presented the results of the survey of civil servants, implemented within the PAR Monitor. The questionnaire was widely distributed and filled in by 1199 civil servants working in the central administration.
By gathering inputs and comments from participants for the WeBER Platform Meeting which will be held on 19 June 2018, the meeting of the NWG was concluded.