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Discussion on the first year of the Law on public procurement implementation

President of the Managing Board, Stevo Muk participated at the workshop “New Law on Public Procurement: Lessons Learned from the first year of implementation,” which is organized by the Public Procurement Administration and SIGMA on 28 March 2013 at Hotel Maestral (Becici). The workshop is focused on the analysis of the Law on Public Procurement (2011) and important issues in its implementation (transparency, administrative efficiency and effectiveness, etc.).

During 2012, we have prepared a comprehensive study “Corruption and public procurement in Montenegro”, analysing new legislation in terms of defining the anti-corruption measures and mechanisms, and compliance with the relevant EU regulations. IA’s President of the Managing Board at this workshop will present some of the findings from the study, as well as recommendations for overcoming the existing shortcomings in the Law.

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Statement: NSA should be politically and ideologically neutral

Question from the daily “Dan”:

How do you comment on the fact that the Army of Montenegro and the National Security Agency (NSA), during 2006, led the lists of political orientation of Pljevlja’s garrison officers regarding the referendum, as evidenced in the document released today in daily „Dan“?

Reply of our public policy researcher, Dina Bajramspahić:

NSA is obliged by Law on NSA to act politically and ideologically neutral and this case shows that many harsh criticisms on our intelligence agency are not totally unfounded and that NSA has in recent experience (the latest from 2006) activity of influencing the national political events. In insufficiently developed democracies, and unfortunately, sometimes even in those more developed, the national interest is often identified with the interest of the ruling elite, and the intelligence services are used as instruments for the implementation of these interests. This is unacceptable and endangers basic human rights and freedoms. Bearing in mind that the work of intelligence agencies is, by definition, secret, there will always be space for abuse of this type. That’s why it is necessary to develop all forms of oversight over the NSA. In Montenegrin legal framework there are all the sort of levels of control. However, the practice of supervision is not well developed and therefore a strong democratic and civilian control of the NSA is not yet achieved.

In its previous Progress Reports on Montenegro, the European Commission indicates politicization of the Montenegrin Government and the need for its professionalization, so this is no surprise. Newest allegations of political checks of eligibilities of employees of Army should be seen in that light. Any evaluation of the impact and contribution of Government employees, which is beyond the scope of their expertise and work quality and ability, is illegal, discriminatory and as such deserves reaction of prosecution.

The answer was published in today’s edition of “Dan”

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I module of the 2013 Public Policy School

The first module of the Public Policy school was held on March, 23 and 24 2013. Introductory theme was: “The concept and the actors of policy-making” explained to participants with more details by professor Tihomir Ziljak from the Faculty of Political Science in Zagreb.

The topic:
Policy-making process: concept and policy classification as well as policy actors in the process (government, non-government, think tanks and interest groups, etc..); Instruments and dynamics in these policies, “the Europeanization effect”, ie the extent to which the state wants to integrate into the EU policy making and targeted policies that are formed on the supranational, EU level.

The module is realized as a two-day seminar with interactive workshops in PR center in Podgorica.

The project Public Policy School is supported by Commission for the allocation of revenue from the games of chance and managed by the Institute Alternative in collaboration with the Centre for Research and Monitoring (CEMI).

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Press release: Transparency of the National Security Agency must be increased

Traditional opacity of intelligence services is an outdated concept and the National Security Agency (NSA) should also take a more proactive role in bringing their work to the public in accordance with best practices and standards of transparency.

We call upon the Head of NSA to make steps toward increasing transparency and reveal information about the scope of secret data collection implementation by the NSA.

Recently, the Serbian Security-Information Agency (BIA) has published annual data on the precise number of insights taken into the telephone and Internet communications contents. The Head of BIA announced that such data will be published regularly from now [1]. A positive example from the neighboring contry shows that Montenegrin intelligence service’s fear that the publishing of this information will endanger national security – is exaggerated.

NSA is significantly behind other Montenegrin security and defense institutions in terms of proactive information disclosure in accordance with the principles of free access to information. The last statement was posted on the NSA website on November 2010 year, and the total number of announcements is three.

Undertaking active steps by the NSA in terms of greater transparency will contribute to greater public confidence in the legal work of the NSA. We believe it is necessary that NSA publishes on its website all the laws and regulations not labeled “secret” that regulate its operations, beside the Law on National Security Agency. Also, NSA should publish the approved NSA budget for the current year, budget execution reports; data on public procurement that were not confidential, including: calls for a public procurement procedure, the decision to award the contract and public procurement contracts, as well as the organizational structure of the NSA.

Opposition members of the Parliamentary Committee for Security and Defense often express assessments of that NSA unnecessary labels certain acts as confidential. NSA should reconsider all the decisions on confidentiality classification and remove the label “secret” from unjustifiably protected documents and information. Those parts of the annual report on the NSA’s work whose disclosure does not jeopardize national security should also be published in accordance with the principles of transparency and accountability.

Finally, it is necessary to initiate Amendments to the Law on the NSA. It is necessary to define in more precise manner the provision considering supervision of electronic communications and postal deliveries, in a way to explain what is included under electronic communications supervision, which is not the case. Provision of the Act must be precisely aligned with the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights stating that the communication contents should be at the same level of protection as well as data from base stations and IP addresses. On the same basis, it is necessary to adopt a specific provision applicable to the listings access and which will include reasonable time limits for the implementation of these measures.

Dina BAJRAMSPAHIĆ
Policy Analyst