Monitoring of Public Administration Reform Results in Areas of Transparency, Accountability and Integrity 2014-2015

The main problem of human resources management (HRM) reforms is weak political support, insufficiently effective coordination system, politicization of civil service and lack of general managerial skills among the existing managerial personnel.

SUMMARY

The dominant access to information continues to be the access upon request, i.e. the concept of transparency is reduced to reactive approach to data and information publishing. Still, there are some differences between the levels of government, especially between state and entity institutions, so it may be concluded that state institutions have done more on issues of proactive transparency, establishing of integrity plans and strengthening of institutional capacities. At the same time, a large number of lawsuits by third persons imply discontent of citizens, i.e. users of public administration services.

Furthermore, a relatively small number of undertaken disciplinary procedures with mostly mild sanctions is obvious. On the other hand, there are significant oscillations in number of disciplinary proceedings between institutions. Apart from several exceptions having exceptionally large number of procedures, most institutions did not apply the disciplinary responsibility mechanism at all. At the same time, there is a worryingly large number of vacant positions, suggesting that the staffing plans as medium-term human resources planning documents are inadequate, and that the planning is not done in keeping with the principles of efficiency and effectiveness and the use of the existing workforce.

Recommendations from audit reports are being repeated from year to year and that is the common weakness of institutions on all government levels. Besides, the analysis revealed very disturbing results that reflect the situation at all government levels: expenses at all levels of government for temporary service contracts are extremely high, there was no consistent planning of services contracted on this basis, public procurement plans are not disclosed by all institutions, and recommendations given in audit reports usually concern irregularities in public procurement procedures, there is a lack of systemic, comprehensive and long-term HR planning, there is a large number of unfilled vacancies, calling into question the adequacy of existing personnel policy and reliance on existing resources, the practice of arbitrary and unplanned recruitments has continued despite the commitments taken on under the Reform Agenda on limiting employment in the public administration, most institutions did not adopt Integrity Plan, there is no practice of regular publication of Annual Reports. These results indicate that, despite more than a decade of intense effort to reform the public administration, there are still institutions that systematically violate the applicable legal regulations defining the basic standards of transparency, accountability and integrity in the work of public institutions.

RECOMMENDATIONS

It is necessary to harmonise the rules and procedures governing the disciplinary proceedings at all levels. To that end, it is necessary to ensure that CSAs fully take over the conduct of proceedings, being independent institutions with the capacity to conduct these proceedings in a consistent and equitable manner. Also, it is necessary to ensure adequate monitoring and analysis of statistics on proceedings conducted and to make these statistics transparent in a proactive manner.

It is necessary to analyse the reasons why lawsuits are brought and devise a plan of measures and activities to reduce their number.

It is necessary to increase the amount of available information through the use of new technologies, i.e. to establish the practice of proactive transparency with a view to reducing the number of requests for access to information and streamlining access to information. This would entail a revision and modification of the existing Freedom of Access to Information Act or the adoption of new laws at all levels of government.

It is necessary to ensure proactive transparency of the entire budget cycle and explicitly provide for mandatory proactive disclosure of budget cycle information in a form that is accessible and understandable to citizens. Audit reports should be made publicly available on the official websites of the institutions, and a practice should be established of presenting recommendation implementation plans to the general public and reporting on compliance. Special procedures need to be introduced for determining liability in situations where institutions fail to implement the recommendations.

It is necessary to introduce the practice of analysing HR planning, as well as adopting general documents that set the objectives and guidelines on the basis of which better staffing plans can be developed. The system of monitoring and analysis of recruitment in a given period should be clearly defined in order to determine whether the realized recruitment dynamics is in accordance with the set goals.

It would be advisable to ensure that temporary service contracts are concluded only for tasks that are not defined under the rules on internal organisation and staffing, that they are concluded on a fixed-term and one-time basis, in accordance with legal regulations and for precisely defined tasks, as well as cut expenses incurred on this basis.

The public procurement planning process should be synchronized with the budget planning process through public consultation in the procurement planning process, in particular for projects of broader social significance, and by ensuring synchronised publication of the annual procurement plans and budget documents.

All institutions should adopt integrity plans as envisaged under the Strategy for the Fight against Corruption 2015-2019. All institutions that have developed their integrity plans should further strengthen the monitoring of their implementation.

It is necessary to introduce mandatory proactive disclosure of institutions’ annual reports by way of appropriate statutory or regulatory provisions.

Transparency, Accountability and Integrity 2016