Year: 2013

Institutions, key for the oversight of recruitment and promotion in Montenegro’s state administration, lack resources to efficiently perform their duties.

Human Resources Management Authority has a key role in implementing vacancy announcements for state authorities, while the Administrative Inspection within the Ministry of Interior Affairs has a key role in performing oversight of the implementation of these procedures.

Capacities of these institutions are thus of extreme importance for implementation of the new Law on Civil Servants and State Employees, which is expected, as the most recent European Commission’s progress report on Montenegro stated, to lay foundations for professional and impartial state administration.

Institute Alternative (IA) continuously follows implementation of the new Law, by focusing on the implementation of the new rules of recruitment and promotion of on civil servants and state employees.

However, findings of the semiannual monitoring report of recruitment and promotion in state authorities point that not all the institutional preconditions for proper implementation of the new rules are not met.

In July, Human Resources Management Authority had 28 employees, although its new Rulebook on internal organization and systematization envisaged 45 persons for performing this institution’s tasks.

In general, existing human resources and space capacities are not satisfactory, given the scope of the competences of Human Resources Management Authority.

Illustratively, now it takes approximately ten days to implement procedures for testing candidates’ abilities. According to the previous Law on Civil Servants and State Employees, these procedures were realized within two days on average.

Capacities of Administrative Inspection, which is in charge of determining illegalities and irregularities during the procedures for filling and announcing vacant posts in state authorities, are also not satisfactory.

In July 2013, 4 administrative inspectors are active although the earlier rulebook on internal organization and systematization of the Ministry of Interior Affairs envisaged recruitment of 7 of them, while the current rulebook envisaged job positions for 9 administrative inspectors.

With an aim of preventing abuses and circumventing new rules of recruitment and promotion in state authorities, the IA considers necessary to ensure the funds for all the envisaged job positions in the Human Resources Management Authority and Administrative Inspection to be filled.

Both government and parliament should include the needs of these institutions.

Milena MILOŠEVIĆ
Policy Analyst

Despite improvements, the first six months of the implementation of the new Law on Civil Servants and State Employees (LCSSE) with regard to the recruitment and promotion in state authorities was marked by the lack of preconditions and tardiness in the responses of state authorities about filling their vacancies.

Institute Alternative (IA) continuously follows implementation of the new law, with focus on the provisions regulating recruitment and promotion of civil servants and state employees, which are expected to introduce a merit-based system into Montenegrin state administration.

Since January 1, 2013, when it started implementing, this act had certain positive effects.

Internet presentation of the Human Resources Management Authority (HRMA) offers a detailed insight into the reports about testing abilities and subsequent evaluation of candidates for the job positions in state authorities.

Also, filling of vacancies in cases analyzed by the IA in terms of the time period between launching of the filling the vacancies and selection of the candidates can be assessed as efficient.

However, until July 1, 2013, not all the institutional and legal preconditions for the implementation of the law were met.

Six out of thirteen envisaged by-laws, which were supposed to further elaborate the implementation of the law, have not entered into force during the reporting period.

Although there is an increase in submission of information about civil servants and state employees into the Central Human Resources Record, this information system of the HRMA, which is a key to the human resource planning in the state administration, is still only partially updated.

By July 1, data for 7 out of almost 13 thousand servants and employees, who fall under the scope of the law, were not submitted to the system.

Capacities of institutions for the implementation of the new LCSSE and related by-laws are also insufficient.

All the envisaged job positions in the Administrative Inspection and in the HRMA were not entirely filled, but only around fifty per cent of them.

Delays in responses to the freedom of information requests, incomplete answers to these requests, as well as failures of authorities to publish the lists of their employees, hinder monitoring of the law’s implementation.

Also, there is a need for efficient oversight of the application of the act, with an aim of preventing the abuses, such as hiring people via agencies for employment mediation, which can make the obligation of testing abilities of candidates for job in state authority pointless.

Milena Milošević
Policy Analyst