Public administration reform (PAR) remains a key requirement for the EU aspirants on their accession path, and according to the revised enlargement methodology it is now part of the cluster on fundamentals (together with, for instance, rule of law, and economic criteria). As a complex and all-encompassing reform, PAR in the Western Balkan region has for years been thoroughly assessed through the lenses of the SIGMA Principles of Public Administration, developed by the OECD/SIGMA and endorsed by the EU.

These Principles define what makes a well-functioning administration in terms of its ability to deliver transparent, efficient and effective services to citizens and to support socio-economic development. In the context of high external pressure for tangible developments in PAR, homegrown demand for better administration becomes even more important to keep pressuring the government to pursue reforms once the external conditionality dissipates as a result of a completed EU accession process. Civil society actors, with local knowledge of the administration’s functioning, can lead such domestic advocacy efforts aimed at better administration. Independent PAR monitoring and evidence-based dialogue with the government represent a good approach to achieve this goal.

Based on such a rationale, the WeBER project has completed its second, 2019/2020 monitoring cycle.1 Its structured and evidence-based approach to PAR monitoring, just like in the first monitoring cycle in 2017/18, particularly focuses on PAR aspects with the highest relevance to the civil society and to the public.

WeBER PAR monitoring strongly relies on the strengths, skills, and local knowledge of the civil society in the Western Balkans. It builds on SIGMA’s Principles of Public Administration as a cornerstone of PAR, while assessing them from the standpoint of an independently produced PAR Monitor methodology. Overall, the methodology, slightly revised using the lessons learned in the first monitoring cycle, is based on the selection of 22 SIGMA principles within six key areas, monitored and reported through 23 compound indicators.

The PAR Monitor methodology is rooted in the regional approach. The design of all WeBER indicators enables comparisons between the administrations in the Western Balkans and allows for regional comparability of results. In addition to the methodology, the PAR Monitor package comprises a comparative monitoring report for the entire WB region as well as six reports which elaborate on detailed findings for each administration. The present report provides results of the second monitoring exercise for Serbia, including a set of actionable recommendations.

Članak National PAR Monitor 2019/2020 se pojavljuje prvo na European Policy Centre.

These Principles define what makes a well-functioning administration in terms of its ability to deliver transparent, efficient and effective services to citizens and to support socio-economic development. In the context of high external pressure for tangible developments in PAR, homegrown demand for better administration becomes even more important to keep pressuring the government to pursue reforms once the external conditionality dissipates as a result of a completed EU accession process.

Civil society actors, with local knowledge of the administration’s functioning, can lead such domestic advocacy efforts aimed at better administration. Independent PAR monitoring and evidence-based dialogue with the government represent a good approach to achieve this goal.

Članak National PAR Monitor 2019/2020 se pojavljuje prvo na European Policy Centre.

The PAR Monitor 2019/2020 is the result of monitoring work performed in 2020 by the members of the Think for Europe Network, and it represents a compilation report of key findings from across the Western Balkans in the six areas of PAR defined by the Principles of Public Administration (SIGMA principles). As the second systematic PAR monitoring done in the region by civil society, this report offers not only comparisons between Western Balkan (WB) administrations, but also comparison with the baseline PAR Monitor findings of the 2017/2018 monitoring cycle.

PAR Monitor reports are based on a comprehensive methodological framework designed by the WeBER research team that combines quantitative and qualitative sources of evidence. With the SIGMA principles as the building blocks of monitoring work, PAR Monitor reports are complementary to similar work by SIGMA/OECD and the European Commission, differing in that they offer citizen and civil society perspectives on these principles.

Together with this comparative regional report, the PAR Monitor package consists of six national reports, each including findings on a total of 23 compound indicators to monitor a selection of SIGMA Principles.

In line with the mission of the WeBER initiative, these monitoring exercises are driven by the necessity to strengthen domestic, bottom-up pressure for PAR from civil society in the region, especially from the view of keeping demand for this reform ongoing in the event of the loosening of the EU’s conditionality which may come with membership in the Union. All findings from this report and from the baseline PAR Monitor 2017/2018 can be accessed and compared on the Regional PAR Scoreboard at www.par-monitor.org.

Članak Western Balkan PAR Monitor 2019/2020 se pojavljuje prvo na European Policy Centre.

Context: Mobile apps as the leading solution for tracing COVID-19 infections

Tracking infected people and their contacts is increasingly being recognised as a key measure to prevent future outbreaks of the COVID-19 illness. Most recently, the German chancellor calmly explained to her nation why it is necessary for the state to track every single infection as well as all of the people with whom infected individuals recently interacted. The eHealth Network of the EU considers tracing contacts to have a crucial role in “all phases of the outbreak, especially as part of containment measures during de-escalation scenarios”.

Mobile phone apps, considering the widespread penetration of mobile technology among the world’s population, have surfaced as the most viable means to achieve this purpose. Moreover, a part of the international scientific community has affirmed that mobile apps can make the work of public health authorities faster, more efficient, and effective at the proper scale, as manual contact tracing is too slow to contain the virus. The main purpose of such apps is to notify users if they potentially had contact with COVID-19-positive individuals, even if at the moment of contact the person carrying the virus was not aware of it. Several countries have already swiftly implemented such solutions, among which Asian countries (such as Singapore, China, Taiwan, and South Korea) have emerged as the most prepared, partly due to their previous experience with the outbreak of SARS from 2002 to 2004 and partly due to the continent’s generally advanced technological know-how.

The discussion about introducing contact tracing technology has also quickly taken root in the developed Western world. At least 14 EU member states have already initiated or considered developing contact tracing apps. News about Google and Apple joining forces to come up with software compatible with both Android-based devices and iPhones emphasised the importance of private sector partnerships, but also public-private partnerships, leaving governments little option but to support the two giants responsible for the technology behind practically all smartphones used today. Yet, in the Western world, the concept of developing tracking apps immediately raised numerous concerns related to the protection of privacy and personal data, as well as to whether the data collected through the apps would be stored in a centralised or decentralised manner. Europe has been the leading actor promulgating these concerns, a role which can easily be traced back to its recent achievements in raising the standards of data protection through common EU legislation.

Although in Serbia a larger-scale public discussion on contact tracing technology has not yet been opened, the digital orientation of the incumbent government makes it likely that the country will soon follow wider trends towards implementing a contract tracing app. Additionally, practices in Serbia’s neighbouring countries (such as in North Macedonia, where the government launched the “StopKorona!” app that is open source for reuse) are likely to induce positive pressure on Serbian authorities. As a country aiming to join the EU, Serbia is expected to gradually adopt the Union’s principles and legislation, which opens the question of with which models and how transparently Serbia should approach this issue going forward.

Problem: The dilemmas and unanswered questions of contact tracing apps

As mentioned above, issues of protecting personal data and privacy are core to the discussion on the introduction of contact tracing apps. Questions of what personal data is to be collected by whom, stored where, and managed in what manner, have dominated debates. The least privacy-threatening model proposed so far is a solution based on Bluetooth communication between mobile phones rather than on tracking individuals by GPS location. This Bluetooth model is already being applied in some countries, including, for example, Singapore and North Macedonia.

This preferred model is nevertheless not without flaws, particularly in relation to the efficacy and accuracy of Bluetooth technology, as well as the limits of user acceptance and public trust in government measures. Some sources, for instance, point to the risk that Bluetooth could show false contacts due to issues with measuring proximity. This could happen, for example, if the phones of neighbours communicate through walls or different floors of the same building, or in the open air if people cycle close to each other. Consequently, people who do not interact with an infected person can still potentially receive a notification which could cause unnecessary worry.

Another important issue to consider is the threshold of the number of users needed for such an app to achieve its purpose. For any user, a benefit-cost ratio informs their decision whether or not to download the app. Apart from a very small percentage of highly vigilant and ethically motivated citizens, most citizens would find downloading such an app to be a nuisance with little perceived benefit. The continuous use of Bluetooth uses up a phone’s battery power, for instance, which reduces the willingness of users to keep such an app switched on. Another concern relates to those parts of the population that do not use, or consistently carry, smartphones. Therefore, the problem of “free riders” naturally emerges in this discussion, as this contact tracing system is essentially voluntary, relying on people’s consciences to use the app. Experts have warned that at least 60% of the population is needed to participate for the app to work to its desired effect, which could present a difficult hurdle to overcome.

The question of user acceptance further leads to what is probably the greatest factor of all: trust. It is highly probable that in countries and societies with high levels of social trust and, particularly, trust towards public authorities and institutions, the uptake of such apps will be higher. Surveys done in countries with higher levels of trust have shown people to be surprisingly in favour of downloading an app of this type or keeping it on their phone if it was to be automatically installed by their mobile operator. Yet, even in these countries, privacy and security-related concerns still represent a major hindrance to installing such apps, as respondents tend to be concerned that such an app might have the potential to be used by government to increase surveillance after the epidemic or that their phones “might get hacked”. This discussion reveals that understanding and addressing people’s fears is essential in formulating a method of tracking people’s contacts through their most personal devices.

In the need to address the aforementioned problems, the EU’s Data Protection Supervisor has called upon member states to work towards a joint solution in providing a single, EU-wide COVID-19 tracing app, ideally with coordination from the WHO, and perhaps motivated by the need to restore freedom of movement in the single European market. Additionally, the EU’s eHealth Network recently issued a toolbox for member states, proposing a set of recommendations for a common approach and expressing key requirements for any app being built: that it is to be “voluntary, approved by the national health authority, privacy-preserving, and dismantled as soon as no longer needed”. These recent EU developments present a framework in which Serbia – an EU aspirant – should search for its solutions.

Prospects: A way forward for Serbian policymakers

In developing a new, or adopting an existing, mobile app in Serbia, decision-makers should carefully consider the dilemmas and concerns discussed above. Future solutions should be based on a sound understanding of people’s worries and implemented so as to minimise them. The recommendations suggested below may offer some guidance to experts and decision-makers charged with this task.

Although most recently the media has referenced citizens’ high levels of trust in the Serbian leadership’s actions in fighting the pandemic, outside of a heated crisis, Serbian citizens generally tend to have low levels of trust in the key institutions of the state. Therefore, an important question to consider is how to generate and retain the trust needed for citizens to download and use such an app. Before proceeding with a solution and promoting it as the latest token of the government’s digital orientation, policymakers should implement a survey of a representative sample of citizens to learn about their willingness, concerns, and priorities in relation to this policy. Based on a sound understanding of those issues revealed in the survey, there are at least two sets of measures that the government needs to take.

1. The development and implementation of the mobile app need to be done in full transparency, preferably including partners engaged in topics of government accountability, open data and personal data protection from within Serbia’s vibrant civil society and tech community. Only with stakeholder involvement and scrutiny can such efforts yield positive results and, more importantly, ensure public trust.
2. The government needs to implement a short, but wide-reaching communication campaign, addressing concerns and providing key information and clear, simple and reassuring messages. This communication strategy needs to be prepared and delivered by professionals, not politicians, and must be inclusive rather than divisive. Messages which intimidate or shame citizens, include inconclusive and vague information, potentially leaving people with more questions than answers (as happened at the start of the COVID-19 crisis’ management) should be entirely absent from this new phase of fighting the pandemic.

The Serbian Government has a good chance of confirming its pro-European orientation by allying with its EU partners in the search for a solution. Since the Serbian personal data protection law is already relatively closely aligned with the EU’s GDPR, the government simply needs to comply with its own legislation in implementing this technological solution. Moreover, considering the high frequency of interaction between Serbia’s population and that of other European countries (much more so than with the rest of the world), as well as the country’s overall interest in establishing normal travel arrangements with its main economic partner, adopting European solutions in this matter simply makes sense.

In sum, although a plethora of options for digital contact tracing is available to the Serbian Government in the fight against COVID-19, the government must assess the crucial dilemmas accompanying them and build an understanding of the population’s concerns before implementing one. Bluetooth-based apps have stood out as the least worrisome solution for data privacy so far and represent the logical choice for the Serbian government. It is essential that the process of introducing such an app is as transparent as possible and ensures the inclusion of civil society and the tech community. Emulating best EU practice can help to avoid mistakes in the sphere of personal data protection for example, and can help to support the country’s pro-European orientation.

This text is published as a CEP policy brief. The brief is available for download here. (English)

Članak COVID-19 tracing app in Serbia se pojavljuje prvo na European Policy Centre.

Nevertheless, issues of privacy and data protection, and low public trust and user acceptance can prevent these apps from being used.

This policy brief argues that Serbia’s government needs to ensure a good understanding and respect of citizens’ concerns before proceeding with the implementation of one. Given the comprehensive EU-level discussions towards funding the best possible common solution aligned with the Union’s robust personal data protection policies, little can go wrong if Serbia follows European approaches. This can also help reaffirm the country’s pro-European orientation.

Članak COVID-19 tracing app in Serbia se pojavljuje prvo na European Policy Centre.

The government of Serbia has made some progress. Examples include helping parents of new-borns to overcome administrative steps through a no-stop shop[1] while still at the maternity ward, or allowing the business sector to register their businesses entirely online in less than a day. Good results brought about a favourable international assessment by the European Commission and OECD/SIGMA, commending the government’s efforts to create user-oriented administration. This motivated the government to continue placing its digital transformation under the spotlight, proving that “where there is a (political) will, there is a way.”

But in spite of the efforts the government has made, service delivery is about much more than digitalisation. There are still very limited mechanisms that would reinforce the government’s commitment to a citizen-centred, transparent and accountable administration. CEP has already written about some key issues based on the recent WeBER PAR monitoring. One of the points is that, although the Serbian population recognises the government’s digitalisation policy and its efforts to simplify administrative procedures, people cannot tell precisely what it intends for them as end-users and they do not know how to take advantage of these efforts, as tangible effects remain unclear or are not communicated in the right way.

Renewal of the strategic framework is one of the recent activities on the government agenda, with two significant documents to be adopted and enforced in 2020 – public administration reform strategy and e-government programme. If we disregard a crucial point, which falls outside the scope of this blog post and relates to the need to change mindsets so that there is less strategy and more delivery (for which Serbia has not yet reached the maturity level), it becomes important to highlight four key issues that should be addressed in the future strategic framework for advancing government services.

1.      Citizens want to track how service providers handle their personal data

As many institutions keep official records with citizens’ personal data and regularly access other government registries, the question of accessing, managing or processing that data in a transparent and accountable way is important for service users. However, there is currently no system in place that allows citizens to monitor how the government handles their personal data. In other words, citizens cannot track which providers keep their data; what precisely is being kept, how and where; and who has access, when or for what purpose.

This contributes to the fear of potential data misuse, especially after cases in which, for example, excerpts from electronic databases with personal data ended up in publicly available online sources. Another example was demonstrated by CEP’s recent public opinion poll on service delivery, in which people identified poor protection of citizens’ personal data as one of the abuses in the work of the police administrative service.

2.      Citizens want to be better informed on their rights as service users

Citizens are often unaware of their rights as service users because the government makes little effort to communicate it to them. This makes it harder for them to recognise and report misconduct. A recent CEP opinion poll showed, for example, that citizens feel uninformed or minimally informed when requesting primary health care services. In the case of administrative services (such as registering your car), CEP also found that some providers published incomplete information on how to request a service. Even this mere posting of information would take no effort, because it is often copied from official regulation and does not contain any user-friendly content or Q&A. Moreover, the information that does exist often contains highly bureaucratic language, with little or no visual or audio-visual guidance. Uninformed users, in their turn, allow the administration to use old, complicated and predominantly paper-based procedures. Aside from the paperwork hassle, this enables new entry points for corruption and bribery.

Innovations in the service delivery area are also miscommunicated. For example, if you go to the nearest police administration office, you will see people queuing to submit a request for passport renewal, unaware that they can save time by making an appointment online. This lack of information, particularly in the digital government sphere, is in part due to poor communication: CEP’s recent monitoring determined that “fewer than a half of Serbian citizens are aware of e-services, and even fewer have used them”. This is demonstrated by the fact that only 11% of Serbia’s population (excluding Kosovo) have accounts on the e-government portal, where citizens can access digital government services.

3.      Citizens want to track the government’s performance and spending in service delivery

The government has no method for evaluating and reporting on its performance (including overall user experience) in service delivery. This is significant when it comes to checking what is going well and what is not and planning improvements. As OECD/SIGMA also determined, there are no mechanisms for gaining a “bigger picture” overview; there is no dashboard (like this one in the UK) to collect and compare fundamental service statistics, such as transaction volumes, costs, satisfaction rates, complaints and digital take-up rates. In other words, there is a lack of data collection practice that would allow the government to evaluate performance and take actions accordingly. Information that is collected is not publicly available, which prevents citizens from monitoring, holding the service providers to account or making informed decisions on which services to choose. This is especially important given the value of information on where taxpayers’ money is spent and how well public services are performing. Without the systematic collection of such data to inform policy, it is highly unlikely that any new service delivery development will last.

4.      Citizens want to be involved in service design and delivery

Public service providers make decisions with little knowledge of people’s preferences. There is currently no systematic practice that allows users to participate in the design of a service from the very beginning, which has been criticised by the European Commission and OECD/SIGMA. Consequently, services are not sufficiently tailored to users’ needs and are underused in practice. (Remember the e-government portal? It is full of bureaucratic language, outdated and unsuitable for mobile devices.) The administration should start thinking of public services from the users’ point of view. It needs to realise that citizens have a complete picture of their life events, unlike the administrators who tend to focus on the procedural steps of service provision. Users’ early inputs are therefore crucial, through focus groups or testing/prototyping, for example, instead of when the service is already designed. This can reduce risks or inconsistencies, and save costs by preventing time and money from being spent on projects with poor user acceptance (for example, only 5% of citizens have a qualified electronic certificate, which allows you to sign documents online and use some digital services). This policy brief by CEP offers tangible recommendations to the government on how to involve citizens in service design.

To sum up

When developing service delivery policy, the government needs to give special attention to personal data protection, better communication of citizens’ rights and novelties in service provision, transparency about spending and performance, and user engagement from the start. Also, by making the administration more transparent and accountable, the government could contribute to corruption prevention. There must be a focus on these issues in order to achieve public administration reform goals and to finally fulfil the promise of user-oriented administration.

[1] No actions or forms are required from a citizen to receive a certain government service

Članak Four things citizens want to see in the future service delivery policy in Serbia se pojavljuje prvo na European Policy Centre.

Compared to the previous enlargement rounds, the EU has been placing much greater emphasis on the quality of the implemented reforms in the Serbian (and Montenegrin) case. It has required from Serbia to monitor the achieved results, demonstrate a track record of implementation of the enacted legislation, improve administrative, institutional and financial capacities as well as the resources for the provision of reliable statistical information. In that respect, the EU has introduced the benchmarking mechanism, whose rationale is threefold: to help the candidate country in attaining the EU requirements, by making them more concrete and publicly transparent; to help the EU in measuring effects of the candidate’s undertaken actions and provide critical assessment; and to help “navigate” the entire accession process, by setting the requirements which need to be attained in order to progress to the next step in this process. In short, benchmarks are supposed to translate the EU’s rhetorical commitment and insistence on “fundamental” issues (among which is the rule of law), enshrined in its strategic documents on enlargement policy, into the realities on the ground.

This analysis aims to take stock of the effects of the EU’s benchmarking system on a sample of issues within the Chapters 23 and 24 in Serbia’s EU accession negotiations, pertaining to the following fields: independence of the judiciary and professionalism; freedom of expression; anti-discrimination policy; prevention of corruption within the civil service system; prevention of corruption at borders; asylum policy, and intelligence services. The sample was selected following a mapping of benchmarks that are common or similar among the Western Balkan aspirants for EU membership, for the purpose of achieving regional comparability. The analysis represents the first major attempt to critically evaluate the main factors that influence the scope of EU’s power to make Serbia meet the requirements in the two chapters, in order to further advance in the EU accession process. Although the short timeframe between the opening of the two chapters (July 2016) and closure of this study (January 2018) narrows down the possibility of extracting far-reaching conclusions, the findings of this analysis are expected to enrich the debate on how to render the rule of law related reforms, implemented during the EU accession process, sustainable, which is in the interest of both the EU and Serbia.

Find Regional Analysis, as well as analysis for other Western Balkan countries here.

Članak EU’s Benchmarking within Chapters 23 and 24 in Accession Negotiations with Serbia se pojavljuje prvo na European Policy Centre.

This brief has made as a part of Towards a Smart Staff Retention Policy for the Sustainable EU Integration of Serbia.

Članak Towards a Smart Staff Retention Policy for the Sustainable EU Integration of Serbia se pojavljuje prvo na European Policy Centre.

During our most recent research project on human resource management in the PA, both former and current civil servants indicated that frequent political changes have resulted in professional civil servants being used as scapegoats. As an outcome of this process, these state employees have found themselves in a disadvantageous position – they have had to handle a lack of political support on one hand, and a negative image of their profession in the wider public on the other. While our research focuses on civil servants working on jobs related to the EU integration process (including the management of EU and other development funds), these results can be used as indicative of a wider dissatisfaction of staff within the PA.

How does the wider public picture civil servants? The common characterisation is that of civil servants as protected from sanctions, lazy, underperforming, disinterested in their work, etc. An illustration could be the pejorative phrase “protected as a polar bear”, widely present in public discourse to describe a civil servant who has all the legal means to remain safe at his or her workplace, despite their actual performance. Additionally, this characterisation is not limited to the private sphere, but is relatively widely spread in the media as well. For an example, one of the larger media outlets titled one of their articles “Malady of Civil Servants: Don’t bother me, I’m sleeping at work.”^[2] Another example of the common understanding of the  public administration and wider public sector in Serbia is a popular TV comedy “Government Job”, focusing on three incompetent local servants who aimlessly spend their working hours.

While it is true that the legal framework makes it difficult to sanction or terminate the employment of civil servants, and that this situation allows unqualified individuals to remain in their positions, our recent research insights offer a another perspective of this group of public sector employees. Namely, the process of rationalisation has left the Serbian PA with a lower number of civil servants than the average EU member state administration.^[3] This creates a situation in which problems such as unpaid overtime, work pressure, understaffed units, unattainable deadlines, difficulties for managers to motivate and manage their staff, and others issues abound and prevent civil servants from performing to their fullest potential. Consequently, the adequate performance management in the organisation is lacking, in the stressful environment in which ad hoc tasks are emerging constantly, prioritisation is hampered while responsibilities are not distributed properly among the employees. In particular, this also means that instead of innovating and reforming the PA, civil servants may often be ‘stuck’ with repetitive administrative tasks which have no added value for the work of the administration.

An additionally relevant insight from our research has been the value which civil servants give to the nature of their work. More precisely, work content and the feeling of contributing to the common good are among the three job advantages indicated by civil servants. This is an important result, given that it confirms the theoretical assumption about two types of work motivations, materialistic and nonmaterialistic. As a UNDP report from 2010 explains:

Non‐materialistic motivation is particularly strong in the public sector, and so‐called “public service motivation” may be defined as an altruistic motivation to serve the interests of the community.^[4]
If you want to keep reading about civil servants in the context of Serbia’s EU accession and the need to retain quality staff, go to our policy study Towards a Smart Staff Retention Policy for the Sustainable EU Integration of Serbia. This study was produced within the German-Serbian development cooperation programme Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH and the project “Support to EU Accession Negotiations in Serbia.” Additional financial support was provided by the Social Inclusion and Poverty Reduction Unit of the Government of the Republic of Serbia (SIPRU).In this context, our research reveals that the insufficient recognition of the importance of the work of civil servants presents an obstacle for motivating them and fostering an innovative and result-oriented atmosphere within the PA. The degraded image of the civil servant in the media and the wider public, combined with the lack of appreciation from the political leadership, threatens to influence the decision of qualified civil servants to leave the administration. From a more long-term perspective for Serbia, a quality PA reform and a successful EU integration process are impossible without adequately motivated civil servants who present the backbone of these processes. Additionally, a negative image of civil servants will continue to create distrust in the PA and the public sector in general. Hence, choosing not to invest in ameliorating the image of the public administration is a risk both for strategic political goals of Serbia, as well as for the long-term relationship between the public sector and the citizens it is supposed to serve.

^[1] Ipsos MORI, “Politicians are still trusted less than estate agents, journalists and bankers,” Public Sector News, 22 January 2016,
https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/politicians-are-still-trusted-less-estate-agents-journalists-and-bankers.

^[2] Blic, “Boljka državnih službenika: Ne ometaj, spavam na poslu,” 14 December, 2014,
http://www.blic.rs/vesti/drustvo/boljka-drzavnih-sluzbenika-ne-ometaj-spavam-na-poslu/9rr73gw.

^[3] Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government, “Modern State – Rational State: How much, how, and why?”, position paper, Belgrade, May 2015, http://www.mduls.gov.rs/doc/Pozicioni%20dokument_Moderna%20i%20racionalna%20drzava.docx.

^[4] UNDP, Motivating Civil Servants for Reform and Performance, 2010, http://orbi.ulg.be/bitstream/2268/37467/1/Motivating%20Civil%20Servants%20for%20Reform%20and%20Performance.pdf.

Članak How do we picture civil servants? se pojavljuje prvo na European Policy Centre.

Given that over 50% of surveyed employees working on EU/IPA jobs have an intention of leaving the administration within the following year, a quality staff retention policy is essential, especially taking into account the relevance of these employees and their contribution to the EU accession and integration processes.

The research project behind this policy study was initiated with the goal of assessing and understanding the intensity and causes of staff turnover, as well as factors of motivation and demotivation, and the overall job satisfaction of employees working on EU/IPA jobs. Results were obtained through qualitative and quantitative analysis of a questionnaire filled out by 195 respondents currently working on EU/IPA jobs, two focus groups with former civil servants who have left these jobs (including both executive and managerial positions), and 16 interviews with current managers within relevant state administration bodies.

This research was conducted within the German-Serbian development cooperation programme Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH and the project “Support to EU Accession Negotiations in Serbia.” Additional financial support was provided by the Social Inclusion and Poverty Reduction Unit of the Government of the Republic of Serbia (SIPRU). During project implementation, CEP successfully cooperated with the European Integration Office, which is the main beneficiary.

Članak Towards a Smart Staff Retention Policy for the Sustainable EU Integration of Serbia se pojavljuje prvo na European Policy Centre.

This particularly concerns the new approach to assessments in country-specific progress reports, i.e. the introduction of a number of changes in the reporting style in order to increase quality, reliability and transparency of reports. The new approach in the annual country reports, along with five-tier assessment scales, is also intended to increase comparability between the countries as well as to provide the stakeholders with the possibility to scrutinize the process and the enlargement countries’ progress towards the EU.
The consequent question is how efficient is the Enlargement Package in intending to assist the countries on their path towards the EU? This CEP Insight gives a brief overview of the 2015 Enlargement Package and outlines the most important issues and concerns for the future.

Članak The 2015 Enlargement Package se pojavljuje prvo na European Policy Centre.