Public Administration Reform Council holds its second session

Prime Minister Zdravko Krivokapić opened the second session of the Public Administration Reform Council. The ultimate goal of public administration reform and the process of digitalisation and optimisation should be optimal and efficient public administration, which will be a better service for citizens and the economy, and the key word in the whole system must be responsibility, PM Krivokapić said.

The Prime Minister pointed out the importance of public administration reform on the Government's agenda.

I expect the Council to propose a solution as soon as possible that will lead to the desired results, so that they can be an example of a good practice to others. Accordingly, one of the priorities must be the professionalisation of management while respecting the competencies of staff, because if politics is dominant when selecting staff, nothing will change, only policy will change and thus no results will be achieved, said Prime Minister Krivokapić.

The Prime Minister points out that one of the models that can be used, which is being implemented in Germany, is three dimensions of competence.

That would mean that attention should be focused on special skills, careful testing of candidates and constant improvement of capacities, said PM Krivokapić.

Minister of Public Administration, Digital Society and Media Tamara Srzentić said that today's proposals within the Dynamic Action Plan in Public Administration Reform stem from the need for the reform to be carefully implemented and designed, to be generally accepted, transparent, respecting the principles of participation and inclusiveness, and to discuss all issues relevant to the public administration reform process.

At today's session, the Council discussed the Dynamic Action Plan in Public Administration Reform until the end of the year, in accordance with the draft plans of the new Public Administration Reform Strategy 2022-2026.

The team of Minister Tamara Srzentić presented activities aimed at developing new e-services for citizens (online birth registration, online death registration, online residence registration, online marriage registration), establishing a single record of the number of employees in public administration, transparent and open work of institutions through the adoption of the Law on Amendments to the Law on Free Access to Information, adoption of the Medium Term Work Programme of the Government 2022-2024, synchronized drafting of the Personnel Plan and Draft Budget for 2022, and development of e-training platform for public administration employees.

In order to ensure continuous monitoring of the implementation of planned activities and timely reporting on the implementation of the Dynamic Plan, the Public Administration Reform Council has formed working teams which will provide additional incentives to achieve the planned results.