WeBER Policy Briefs

According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), transparency refers to an environment in which the objectives of policy, its legal, institutional, and economic framework, as well as policy decisions and all related data and information, are provided to the public in a comprehensible, accessible, and timely manner. In a democratic society, transparency is a fundamental element of good governance which makes public administration more accountable for its work. Additionally, it helps citizens become more aware of their rights and obligations, as well as in better understanding public policy decisions, and it is a precondition for an inclusive decision-making process that involves civil society and all external stakeholders. Furthermore, transparency is a major cross-cutting issue in all areas of Public Administration Reform (PAR) in line with the Principles of Public Administration which represent codified EU membership conditions in this fundamental reform area. Yet, while transparency is recognised in Serbia’s PAR Strategy as an essential component of its public administration reform, eighteen years after the first Public Administration Reform Strategy was adopted in Serbia, numerous important aspects of the administration’s work remain insufficiently transparent. This creates an overall negative impact on the country’s EU accession process, by undermining [...]

The process of adjusting and improving accessibility to public services for disadvantaged groups in the Western Balkans is quite slow and not much progress has been made. This particularly applies to Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), where public service delivery should respond more effectively to the actual needs and demands of the population. In general, Western Balkan administrations aim to increase the accessibility of services to people with disabilities and reach the standards for accessibility. However, this remains limited to the legislative and policy framework, and not equally implemented in practice. Download the Brief here (English) and here (BHS).

Despite being a central part of the executive bodies, policy-making is often undervalued and misunderstood. Public policy regulates the type and level of services that will be provided to the residents, influences developments that occur in the community and shapes the future of democratic changes. However, to respond to occurring challenges in governance and representation, government-citizen relations must be strengthened. Decision-making procedures in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) are multilevel and inefficient, as ethnically based political parties exercise high levels of control on decision-making and the media at the local level, while the rights of minorities remain violated. Furthermore, civil society organisations (CSOs), despite their active role in bridging the gap between government and citizens, often remain overlooked by the authorities. By identifying strengths and challenges to local democracy, including evidence-based practices and implementing agreed reforms, BiH can pursue a continued and enhanced cooperation with authorities in the European Union (EU) and the Western Balkans. Download the Brief here (English) and here (BHS).

Open data refers to public sector information or government data that can be readily and widely accessed and reused. This data must be available at no more than a reasonable reproduction cost, mainly available for download over the internet, in a convenient and modifiable form. The main reason behind this is interoperability - the ability of diverse systems and organisations to work together, allowing for different components to intermix. The opening of public data represents a phase in the development of an idea of public administration transparency, an idea that contributes to society as a whole. Publishing public data contributes to the transparency of public institutions, the work efficiency of public administration, as well as to higher involvement of citizens in decision-making processes. By making governments more transparent, open data can provide clear information on how public money is being spent and how different policies are being implemented. Publicly available data can contribute to informing individuals on relevant state matters and contribute to opinion forming. With that, it can boost citizen participation in political life and promote the significance of public consultations. Furthermore, open data allows citizens to obtain necessary information without needing to directly contact public administration, resulting [...]

In North Macedonia, the public has to be informed about official data and reports on the civil service and employees in the central state administration. This is a legal obligation deriving from the Law on Administrative Servants (LAS) and the Law on Public Sector Employees (LPSE). In the context of properly designing and implementing human resource management (HRM) policy, it is of the foremost importance that in-line authorities possess complete and reliable data about their human resources. This does not mean that all HRM information should be made publicly available, since there are certain types of information that may not be provided publicly, such as personal data. However, the lack of effort for the promotion and dissemination of data on civil service may suggest that governments either do not recognise the importance of accountability or that they are concerned about potential public reactions to what can be seen as oversized and inadequately efficient administrations Find the Policy Brief here (in English) and here (in Macedonian).

In the public administration context, as set forth under the SIGMA Principles, it is extremely important for the State Audit Office (SAO) to apply standards in a neutral and objective way in order to ensure high quality audits, which subsequently will have a positive impact on the public sector functioning. The documents presenting the outcomes of audits should be guided by three principles, i.e., they should be aimed at strengthening the responsibility, transparency, and integrity of the Government and of public sector entities (protection of the public interest); then they should emphasize the importance of such principles to citizens, to the Parliament and to other stakeholders; and finally, they should demonstrate what it means to lead by a role model. The SAO is one of the key institutions in identifying and disclosing irregularities, cases of illegal actions and possible cases of corruption and abuse of office. In this regard, the latest European Commission (EC) Report explicitly states that it is necessary to allocate adequate resources for this institution that has competences in the fight against corruption in order to be able to pursue high-profile cases. Find the Policy Brief here (in English) and here (in Macedonian). [...]