Governments across the globe are increasingly using digital tools to accelerate the tracking of people infected with COVID-19 and their contacts as a key measure to prevent the pandemic’s spread. Among potential solutions, contact tracing mobile applications have emerged as the most used and discussed, and it is likely that many governments, including Serbia’s, will include them in national public health efforts.

Serbia’s multi-stakeholder consultation process has improved considerably through better public outreach, including on the local level. However, the action plan largely continues initiatives from the previous plan mainly with measures of limited ambition.

The Serbian Action Plan addressed many core open government issues, including access to information and civic space. The Government completely implemented 7 of 14 commitments by the end of the assessment period.

This policy brief tackles the transparency of two inter-related aspects of the Serbian Government’s work: decision-making at its sessions and reporting on its activities and results, including on budget spending. It reminds that insufficient transparency limits opportunity for public scrutiny, and therefore opens the door for erosion of rule of law and other democratic standards.

High-quality standards in the development and coordination of public policy are always relevant in a domestic context but even more so in the framework of EU accession.

Governments in the Western Balkans have been implementing public administration reforms (PAR) for over a decade now, with varying degrees of success. Since 2014, PAR is acknowledged as one of the fundamental areas of reform on any country’s path to EU membership and a set of principles was prepared for the accession countries to follow and comply with in this area in order to become successful EU member states.

Governments in the Western Balkans have been implementing public administration reforms (PAR) for over a decade now, with varying degrees of success. Since 2014, PAR is acknowledged as one of the fundamental areas of reform on any country’s path to EU membership and a set of principles was prepared for the accession countries to follow and comply within this area in order to become successful EU member states.

The enlargement of the European Union to the Western Balkans is still an uncertainty, fifteen years after the countries of the region were promised a European perspective at the 2003 Thessaloniki Summit.

The Grey Book of Public Services in Serbia is a product of the two-year project “Partnership for Public Administration Reform and Public Services in Serbia – PARtnerships“, The goal of the Grey Book is to present the most important results of conducted research and to offer a specific set of recommendations for improvement of public service delivery.

This Study was created within the project “Partnership for Public Administration Reform and Public Services in Serbia – PARtnerships”. The project has focused on the services most frequently used by citizens within three different areas: the issuance of personal documents by the police administrative service, services provided by the primary health care units (community health centres), and the services of enrolling children in pre-school institutions and primary schools within the education area.