The 12th meeting of the regional WeBER Platform

The twelfth meeting of the WeBER Platform took place online with the participation of 29 representatives of the regional Platform members. This was the first meeting of the Platform within the WeBER 3.0 project, as well as the first meeting that included new members from the business community – NALED from Serbia and the Chamber of Commerce from North Macedonia.

After the opening remarks and brief introductions of all members, the junior researcher of the WeBER 3.0, Milica Divljak, presented the results of a self-assessment questionnaire on training needs that will be conducted within the WeBER Plus project during the second and third quarters of 2024. The results indicate that the majority of organisations are experienced or very experienced in monitoring public administration reform processes in their countries, especially in the areas of Accountability and Service Delivery. Following the presentation of the questionnaire results, a discussion followed in which WeBER Platform members expressed their desires and needs for capacity building. The presented results, together with collected comments, will be used to develop a training programme to enhance the capacity of the WeBER Platform members to participate in monitoring the public administration reform processes.

The second session of the meeting focused on a discussion of a revised methodology, specifically checklists for monitoring the mainstreaming of Public Administration principles into sectoral policies. The overall monitoring approach and the new checklists were presented by the Lead Researcher of the WeBER 3.0, Miloš Đinđić. “In comparison to the previous pilot research, we decided to simplify the monitoring approach within the WeBER 3.0. The checklist for monitoring Public Financial Management (Budget) will not be used during this research, while the selecting institutions to monitor the mainstreaming of public administration principles will replace the previous selection of sectors. Also, we will only monitor institutions that implement a sectoral policy, meaning institutions such as the Ministry of Finance or the Ministry responsible for public administration will not be the subject of this monitoring”, Đinđić concluded.

The meeting concluded with an open discussion about the issues and challenges faced by organisations that conducted monitoring in the previous cycle, as well as ways to proactively eliminate such issues. Finally, Project Manager Branko Birač briefed participants on the projected timeframe for monitoring implementation, as well as the technical details of the research.