The EU accession process of Serbia implies ambitious and comprehensive public administration reform (PAR). Bearing in mind that since 2014 PAR is defined in the main strategic documents of the European Commission as one of the three reform pillars in the EU enlargement policy, focus on this horisontal reform – which represents substantially a prerequisite for achieving success in all other sectoral policies – has significantly grown.

The project “Partnership for Public Administration Reform and Public Services in Serbia – PARtnerships” aims to contribute to the creation and implementation of policies in the area of public administration reform ensuring more participatory and citizen-centric design and improving accountability and responsiveness of the Serbian government for the quality of services it delivers. Working both at the level of policy development and community level, the project will focus on improving quality and transparency in designing and delivering the most requested types of public services in the area of health, education and internal affairs.

“Partnership for Public Administration Reform and Public Services” is the two-year project implemented by two main partners European Policy Centre (CEP) and European Movement in Serbia (EMinS). Project is realised in co-operation with 12 other partners in Serbia: Pro-Pozitiv, Protecta – Nis, Youth Centre Timok and 9 members of European Movement in Serbia Network from Subotica, Novi Sad, Sremska Mitrovica, Lazarevac, Valjevo, Kraljevo, Kruševac, Novi Pazar and Leskovac.

The goals of the project:

To ensure involvement of CSOs across the Serbian territory in monitoring the progress of PAR and in designing high quality and evidence based proposals for reviewing/improving the PAR policy

To create two-way communication between citizens and responsible public authorities on PAR and public service provision, by collecting citizens’ feedback on the quality of administration and public services and ensuring the reaction of the responsible authorities

To deliver methodologically solid evidence on citizens’ satisfaction with three widely used and salient public services, as one of the key reform areas under the EU accession framework for PAR, and on the quality of policy making in those policy areas

To provide evidence based recommendations and inputs related to PAR in the context of EU accession negotiations

The narrow focus of activities will be three major groups of public services in the field of health, internal affairs and education:

Services in primary healthcare (services available in local medical centres as institutions of primary healthcare system);

Services of issuing personal documents (ID’s, passports, drivers licenses);

Services in education sector – enrollment of children in preschools and primary schools.

Activities:

Organisation of four (4) interactive workshops of CSOs and representatives of relevant institutions which will focus on strengthening and further expanding of the civic engagement and dialogue in the PAR area, as well creation of the broad network of CSOs in the area of PAR.

Implementation of the national campaign “ME in the spotlight!” with the aim to include citizens in the process of PAR. The Campaign will enable collection of stories/testimonies of citizens about their experience with the three groups of public services covered by the project (health, internal affairs and education) through interactive web-portal and large number of local actions and manifestations in 12 cities/municipalities.

Implementation of comprehensive research on the process of public policy development and the citizens’ satisfaction with the services provided in targeted areas using qualitative and quantitative methods.

As a result of all project activities, a Grey Book of Public Services will be produced consisting of the most important results of the project.

More about the project can be found at the project website www.mojauprava.rs.

Project is supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID/Serbia).

Duration of the project: May 2016 – May 2018.

 

Materials:

Policy Note, Workshop 1, Kraljevo, October 2016