WeBER Policy Briefs

A transparent approach to consultation processes, inclusive of civil society and open to the public, is essential to ensure the integrity, quality, and legitimacy of decision-making. The effectiveness and genuineness of such processes are integrally bound to the transparency provided by the institutions in charge of the decision-making. To enable public scrutiny, access to public consultation processes must be ensured by the government, from the initial phases of law-making and policy-making, before the draft documents reach the Parliament. The Council of Ministers (hereinafter ‘’the CoM’’) is a key actor in such processes since it submits an average of 80–85% of all the draft laws that are reviewed by the Parliament every year. Therefore, this policy brief will address public consultation processes at the central government level with the aim to expose factors that enable their circumvention. It argues that to conduct successful and meaningful public consultations processes, the shortcomings in the legal framework and institutional practice that enable the circumvention, need to be addressed. Lastly, it provides policy recommendations that aim to eliminate the identified legal gaps and improve proactive transparency. Find the Policy Brief here (in English) and here (in Albanian).

One of the critical dimensions of the public administration reform (PAR) in Albania and of the European accession process refers to the transparency of policy development. Access to information has been often described as the ‘oxygen of democracy’ enabling citizens to truly participate in an informed way in decision-making processes, hold those in power accountable and influence policy development. The absence of or inaccessibility to information can create a sense of disempowerment, mistrust, and frustration with those in power. Transparency is also a principle of good governance and requires a continues dialogue and cooperation between decision makers and other actors in society. Studies have shown that transparency benefits policy efficiency and is deemed as a crucial instrument to fight corruption. The free flow of information is thus paramount to democratic processes, building trust between government and citizens and contributing to the progress of policy development. Through secondary resources and data collected by the WeBER 2.0 PAR Monitoring Report, this policy brief zooms into the practices of arbitrary policymaking and lack of transparency in policy development in Albania. It discusses its implications and outlines some key recommendations on how to reverse the current situation particularly in terms of increasing transparency [...]

Being part of the wider public administration reform (PAR), policymaking reforms in Serbia entail improvements in implementing consultations with stakeholders, and public debates on policy documents and legislation (hereinafter: public consultations), throughout the drafting process. By consulting the target groups throughout, the effects of the proposed solutions are assessed, and the costs minimized, which makes public consultations one of the most valuable tools in the preparation of draft policy documents and legislation. Moreover, involvement positively impacts sustainability of policies and ensure their responsiveness to real needs of the society. However, public consultations are still insufficiently widespread in policymaking in Serbia, and when they are conducted, it is often pro forma, without ensuring the quality of the process. As a result, policies are often not adapted to the citizens’ needs, and their implementation degree is low. This further contributes to the reduced citizens’ trust in institutions[2], resistance to policy implementation, and ultimately, makes policies unsustainable. The results of the National PAR Monitor 2019/2020 for Serbia indicate that there has been no progress in conducting public consultations compared to the baseline PAR Monitor for the period 2017/2018. In other words, public consultations have not been consistently conducted, there is a lack [...]

Consultation is structured public engagement, which involves seeking, receiving, analysing, and responding to feedback from stakeholders, by defining the purpose and subject of the consultation whether it is a policy initiative, regulatory change, or legislative proposal. The use of public consultation has different implications for the improvement of the regulatory framework. If undertaken in a timely and effective manner, consultation captures the collective intelligence of a society and helps collect empirical information for analytical purposes, especially as a precondition for the move towards more analytically‐based models of decision‐making processes. Furthermore, consultation mechanisms are increasingly characterised by greater openness and accessibility, particularly for smaller, less organised interests, which leads towards more pluralistic approaches. Consultation is inherent to transparent and effective governance. In North Macedonia, based on document analysis as regards the overall public consultation process, it can be said that evidence-based findings produced by CSOs are rarely referenced in the sample of adopted government policy documents. All in all, 19 policy documents in three areas, which are currently being implemented, have been analysed, out of which only 6 contain references to findings produced by CSOs. Read more here (in English).

Developed democracies as a rule boast professional, largely apolitical civil services, which have been recognised as a crucial component of good public governance. Their work is centred on protecting the public interest. Hence, a modern civil service must be governed by specific codified rules, which set standards and procedures for keeping the civil service merit-based and apolitical, while ensuring integrity and accountability of civil servants, as well as sufficient security of their job positions with a view to protecting them against politically motivated dismissals. This Brief is focused on shortcomings of laws governing state and public administration related to the merit-based employment procedure and the criteria for access to senior civil service positions and it offers concrete solutions for overcoming such deficiencies, which have been persisting over a long period of time. The Brief can be downloaded here (in English) and here (in Macedonian).

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. Main reason behind is interoperability - the ability of diverse systems and organizations to work together, allowing for different components to intermix. Opening of public data represents a phase in the development of an idea of public administration transparency, an idea which contributes to the society as a whole. Publishing public data contributes to transparency of public institutions, 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 significance of public consultations. Furthermore, open data allows citizens to obtain necessary information without needing to directly contact public administration, resulting in higher efficiency and less workload [...]