This affects a large number of people every year. In 2025, more than 29,000 marriages were concluded and over 10,000 divorces recorded, a large share of them involving a last name change. The burden falls in a large majority of cases on women – between 2000 and 2018, only 2,356 men took their wife’s last name – which makes a unified service a gender-responsive public service as well.

In the worst-case scenario analysed in this brief, re-establishing one’s identity requires five procedures for personal documents, one for registering a new residence, seven for data in registers and databases, and a “hidden” fourteenth: updating the eGovernment Portal account, without which most other online services remain out of reach. Only six of the 14 procedures can currently be completed online without a visit, and four only partly; the ID card, passport and vehicle registration certificate each require at least two visits to a police station; and fees, paid separately, total more than 14,000 RSD. Even finding out what you need to do is difficult: the Portal’s life event section only links to appointment scheduling, lists only four of the five documents in its part on marriage and says nothing about fees. Moreover, citizens’ obligations are spread across at least ten legal acts, with no official guidebook.

A focus group with six women and in-depth interviews with five showed how this plays out in practice: lack of coordination between institutions, repeated visits, carrying documents between institutions although the law obliges institutions to exchange them, and reliance on blogs and lawyers’ websites in the absence of clear instructions. All of this comes at an emotionally and financially demanding moment, in a change experienced as deeply identity-related.

To address these problems, the WeBER Policy Lab brought CEP together with the Public Policy Secretariat, the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Office for IT and eGovernment. At a design thinking workshop in May 2025, the participants co-created two prototypes – a unified e-service on the Portal and a unified request form for one-stop shops – and agreed that any solution must be accompanied by an authoritative guidebook for citizens, in print and digital form and written in simplified language. Although the research, the co-created design and donor resources were in place, testing and production have been postponed due to the prolonged political crisis.

Building on this work, the brief proposes two unified services, for personal documents and for data in registers, delivered online through the eGovernment Portal and physically through one-stop shops. The recommendations focus on:

• establishing both online and offline services based on the Policy Lab prototypes;
• updating the eGovernment Portal account automatically as soon as the new ID card with an electronic certificate is issued, while allowing users to start the service with their existing credentials;
• standardised requests requiring only basic information from the citizens, with a single itemised payment order, status tracking and SMS confirmations;
• strengthening inter-institutional data exchange and the application of the once-only principle;
• production of an official guidebook, “You have changed your last name – what now?”, staff training and a feedback mechanism reported on annually.

Članak After the Surname Changes: From Scattered Procedures to a Unified Life-Event Service se pojavljuje prvo na European Policy Centre.

WeBER 3.0 continues to promote the crucial role of CSOs in PAR, while also advocating for broader citizen engagement in this process and inclusive reform measures which are user-tailored and thus lead to tangible improvements.

By grounding actions in robust monitoring data and insights, WeBER 3.0 will empower civil society to more effectively influence the design and implementation of PAR. To foster collaborative policymaking and bridge the gap between aspirations and actionable solutions, the project will facilitate sustainable policy dialogue between governments and CSOs through the WeBER Platform and its National PAR Working Groups. Finally, through small grants for local CSOs, WeBER 3.0 bolsters local-level PAR engagement, amplifying
the voices of citizens – the final beneficiaries of the public administrations’ work.

WeBER 3.0 products and further information about them are available on the
project’s website at www.par-monitor.org

Članak Western Balkan PAR Monitor: PUBLIC SERVICE AND HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT 2024/2025 se pojavljuje prvo na European Policy Centre.

Članak PAR Monitoring and Coordination: What space for civil society to influence? se pojavljuje prvo na European Policy Centre.

Public administration reform (PAR), as an integral part of the first cluster, is one of the fundamental conditions on the way to the EU membership. In the Western Balkans region, this reform has been assessed for years through the lenses of the SIGMA Principles of Public Administration, developed by 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 achieving this goal.

Based on such a rationale, the WeBER project has completed the third PAR monitoring cycle for 2021/2022. The structured, evidence-based approach, as in the previous two monitoring cycles, particularly focuses on PAR aspects with the highest relevance to 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 PAR areas, monitored and reported through 23 compound indicators.

The third monitoring cycle also represents the last edition of the PAR Monitor in accordance with the existing framework of the SIGMA Principles from 2014, modified in 2017, since the process of revision of the Principles is ongoing. Therefore, the next, fourth monitoring cycle will be based on the modified PAR Monitor methodology, aligned with the new SIGMA framework, given that it represents the basis of the WeBER approach to PAR monitoring in the Western Balkans region. 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. This report provides the results of the third monitoring cycle for Serbia, including a set of actionable recommendations.

Članak National PAR Monitor 2021/2022 se pojavljuje prvo na European Policy Centre.