The Third Meeting of the National Working Group (NWG) on Public Administration Reform (PAR) in Serbia, was held on 13 June in Belgrade attended by the representatives of the SIGMA/OECD, who presented the results of SIGMA 2017 Assessment for Serbia during the first part of the meeting.
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. On that occasion, Jasmina Mikovic presented the main findings of the research on transparency of the local self-government and implementation of the new Law on General Administrative Procedure, which Praxis conducted within the project Contributing to Public Administration Reform in Kraljevo. She also emphasized the importance of respecting and applying human rights principles in the creation of local policies, with particular reference to the importance of the participation of all groups in society, including children, women, minorities and certain vulnerable groups in decision making, so that the local self-government is ready to respond to the needs of vulnerable social groups. Thereby, it is necessary to constantly take care of preserving the non-discrimination principle in all local policies, and particularly when making decisions and providing services.
See the statement at WeBER platform.
See the video on the activities implemented within the WeBER project.
