The report Contributing to Public Administration Reform in Kraljevo  was prepared as the result of the research conducted by Praxis within the project "Contributing to public administration reform in Kraljevo" in the period from 1 June 2017 - 31 March 2018, as part of  the project Western Balkans Enabling Project for Civil Society Monitoring of Public Administration Reform (WeBER), financed by the European Union and co-financed by the Kingdom of Netherlands.

Based on the conducted research of the transparency of local self-government and the efficiency of local administrative bodies in Kraljevo, as well as monitoring of the application of the Law on General Administrative Procedure, Praxis has established that there is a significant  space for improving the work of local administrative bodies in all areas. 

Despite the efforts made in recent years in the field of public administration reform, both at the national and local level, there is no visible progress in some areas. The most serious gaps have been identified in the area of transparency of the work of administrative bodies, in particular regarding public participation in decision- and policy-making processes, since the participation of citizens and civil society organisations in such processes is almost non-existent. Consequently, discriminatory decisions have been made in several cases indicating the failure of local self-government to respond to the needs of vulnerable groups. Active citizen participation in the decision-making and policy-making process can undoubtedly prevent the adoption of discriminatory and inappropriate decisions and make the work of administration accountable and efficient.  

In addition, it has been established that there is no proactive approach in terms of improving the conditions and creating a conducive environment for the development of civil society at the local level. 

The role of the local media in Kraljevo, as drivers of public debate, is not sufficiently developed in the area of public administration reform, due to both financial instability and insufficiently encouraging environment for reporting on specific topics.

Download the report here.