IA on the Radio of Montenegro, chatting on social policy

Our researcher, Dragana Radović, was interviewed for the Radio of Montenegro’s program dedicated to social issues and presented the findings of IA’s research in the social policy area on the topic of the challenges of the development of welfare mix (combined model of social policy).

Press release: Plan condemned to failure

Comment on the Government’s Action plan for the implementation of the State Audit Institution’s recommendation

The Government has fulfilled the promise and adopted an Action plan for implementation of the recommendations of the State Audit Institution (SAI) at its session, held on November 29, 2012. Although the Government’ss attitude toward the recommendations of the SAI is commendable, the form in which the Action Plan was passed – without concretizing the SAI recommendations, without a carefully metered (real) terms, without specific details on relevant institutions (household activities) and without setting clear and measurable indicators of implementation of activities – indicates that the Government’s Action Plan is a dead letter.

The most important disadvantage of the Action Plan is the lack of specific indicators. Therefore it will be impossible to “measure” implementation and to give a clear image of what is done to comply with the Plan.

Recommendations and measures made by the SAI are mainly general. However, they were included in the Action Plan as such and they haven’t been elaborated, which would be a prerequisite to make progress in areas SAI designated as problematic.

Other disadvantages of the Action Plan include the fact that the most of the measures are not specifying entities that are competent to fulfill the recommendations, but the responsibility is divided on all consumer units. In certain recommendations the holder of measures or the competent institution haven’t been properly appointed. For specific recommendations, which fulfillment is apparently under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Finance, responsibility is divided to all spending units. In some places, many different SAI recommendations that imply different activities for its completion, the Government of Montenegro brought together under the same paragraph, the same competent institution and the same term.

For some recommendations which are systemically defined, concrete mechanisms for their implementation are not designed, nor a certain initiator of efforts for changing the steady state behavior is identified.

Also, given deadline is unrealistic – “Now” – for measures that obviously can be implemented only by next year, or which need some time for its implementation. This is especially confusing if we bear in mind a significant number of cases tending to correct recurring irregularities appearing in the SAI reports year after year.

The Government has not planned to fulfill one of the key recommendations of the SAI, which refers to the establishment of mechanisms by the Ministry of Finance in order to verify the submissions and consumer units. The system of monitoring the fulfillment of the Action Plan and the fulfillment of obligations of the Ministry of Finance to the Government and SAI reports on implementation of the recommendations has not been established.
All this points to a lack of Governments will to really tackle the identified problems, many of which are repeated in SAI annual reports in years. In a certain way the Government is in advance given an alibi for failure of fulfillment of recommendations or even “relaxed” attitude toward their fulfillment.

Bearing all this in mind, we call on the Government to return the Action Plan to be amended in order to correct all the deficiencies and to demonstrate a real willingness to implement the recommendations of SAI. We also recommend that consideration of this Action Plan should be the first item on the agenda of the new- formed Committee for Economy, Finance and Budget.

Look up the Government Action Plan of implementation of the recommendations of the State Audit Institution here.

Marko Sošić
Public Policy Researcher

Press release: Opposition to chair the Security and Defense Committee

Among all requests submitted by the opposition with regard to the constitution of the working bodies and presiding over them, the chairmanship of the Defence and Security Committee is one of the most necessary and legitimate one.

Such solution would finally comply with resolutions of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on the rights and obligations of the opposition in democratic Parliament, which says that “the chairmanship of committees that are responsible for overseeing the work of the Government, such as the Committee on Budget and Finance Committee, the Inquiry Committee or Committee of oversight of the security and intelligence agencies, should belong to the MPs from the opposition.”

Security and Defense Committee is a working body whose main task is the oversight of this important sector, and as such naturally chairmanship belongs to the opposition because of the effective exercise of its jurisdiction. Montenegro is an exception in the region, since the parliamentary oversight of security and defense sector is centralized in one working body of the Parliament. The need for opposition to chair this Committee is thus even more pronounced.

We remind that in the previous convocation, the Committee acted without the vice-president from the opposition, which was also a lack and a barrier to its effective work.

Solution that would provide opposition’s MP to chair the Committee would give more space to opposition to act in the Committee, increase confidence in its work and in the overall work of the security and defense sector.

We determined that the one of the key successes of the Security and Defence Committee in the previous convocation was the approval and adoption of a comprehensive legal framework for the exercise of parliamentary oversight in this area. Unfortunately, the Committee was not able to conduct a thorough oversight at the same time although the Law on Parliamentary Oversight created the possibility and obligation for it.

The work of the Committee in the previous convocation was characterized by the insufficient use of available control mechanisms and uncertain result of the exercise of parliamentary oversight. General conclusions, passivity of both- the ruling coalition and the opposition, rejection of a significant number of opposition’s initiatives, neglected entire area over which control was supposed to be performed (eg, monitoring of the implementation of the SSM), unregular revision of the reports on the work of the institutions under oversight, are just some of the issues that characterized the work of the Committee.

Opposition chairmanship over the Committee, though not a solution to all of these questions itself, would be a good chance to raise parliamentary oversight of the security and defense sector to a higher level. This solution would represent not only an opportunity but also an obligation for the opposition to show constructive approach to the jurisdiction of this working body to control the Executive.

Marko Sošić
Public Policy Researcher

Jovana Marović on public administration reform for Vijesti

IA’s Research Coordinator, Jovana Marović, appeared in the main informative program of the television Vijesti sharing views on the reform of public administration, ie, rationalization of the Government. Watch the interview here:

Closing conference: The challenges of developing combined social policy (welfare mix)

IA held the closing conference within the project entitled “The Challenges of the development of welfare mix in Montenegro“. IA presented the results of the quantitative research conducted under this project. We are very pleased with the high number of relevant social actors who attended this meeting: nearly hundred representatives of NGOs, local government, Agency for employment of Montenegro, centers social work and other institutions of social and child protection.

All participants had an opportunity to influence on local and national decision makers by discussing about relevant issues in this area and to improve cooperation between different social actors. They also offered recommendations for the development of welfare mix in Montenegro, which will be the part of the research report. Research report will be published until the end of this month.

Media about the conference:

http://antenam.net/sajt/index.php/politika/15611-institut-alternativa-da-mris-vie-sarauje-sa-civilnim-sektorom
http://www.vijesti.me/vijesti/drzava-ne-posvecuje-dovoljno-paznje-socijalnoj-politici-clanak-101604.