Stevo Muk, the President of the Managing Board of the Institute Alternative, was the guest in the TV show “Friday at 8”, hosted by Tina Raičević on TV Vijesti. The topic of the discussion was the Government reshuffle.
Other guests were Neđeljko Rudović, deputy Editor in Chief of the Daily newspaper Vijesti and Dragan Janjušević, political analyst.
The TV show in its entirety can be found here:
The number of the complaints filed by the candidates for employment in state organs who did not get the job has increased which imposes the need to stipulate in details the discretion of the elders when deciding.
Twenty six candidates, of at least 130 who have filed complaints against the decisions on the selection of the civil servants and state employees, have filed complaints to the Appeals Commission because the selection of the top-ranking candidates has not been done, according to the research of the Institute Alternative, conducted within the project “State administration in Montenegro – Equal for All”, funded by the U.S. Embassy in Podgorica.
Seventeen of these complaints have been adopted.
Last year, according to the findings of the IA, there have not been any complaints related to the non-selection of the top-ranking candidates.
We remind that one of the key innovation that can be found in the Law on Civil servants and State Employees, whose application has started in January 2013, was the duty to employ top-ranked candidate. Only exceptionally and with the explanation, the Elder can, after the interview has been conducted, decide to employ other than top-ranked candidate.
However, the decisions on complaints indicate that the elders have not given sufficiently convincing arguments for their decision not to employ the first-ranked candidate.
It happens very often that the elder indicate that they have brought the decision after the interview, without specifying further the reasons why such decision has been brought.
Analyzed complaints and decisions on complaints also point to the lack of understanding of the legal provisions which provide that, while employing in the civil service, the proportional representation of minorities and of gender-balanced representation should be taken into account.
Namely, in five cases, although they were not top-ranked, the candidates of minority ethnic origin have been employed, with the argument that the proportional representation of minorities has been taken into account while making the decision.
However, three complaints against these decisions on selection have been adopted with the explanation that the Law on civil servants and state employees does not stipulate giving priority to the candidates solely on basis of their ethnic origin.
Moreover, one candidate has filed a complaint because he was better ranked than other, but the decision has not been complied with the regulation on the gender balance, since the “all chosen candidate were female.”
In several cases, top-ranked candidate have filed the complaint because the elders have estimated that the candidate would not be able to occupy that position for a longer period of time, due to their ambitions for professional development, which is in direct contradiction with the principle of recruitment and promotion based on merit.
In order to limit the elders’ abuse of the discretion right during the selection of civil servants and state employees, IA urges the Government to comply with the recommendation, which we have formulated in the first monitoring report on employment and promotion in state bodies, and to use specific guidelines which would clearly define the reasons when the top-ranked candidate may not be appointed to the position in the state administration.
Milena Milošević
Public Policy Researcher
We appeal to the Ministry of Finance to improve the transparency of the national budget by implementing the practice of budgetary data in the form that would allow the data processing and searching.
In December 2014 during the parliamentary discussion on The Budget Proposal, Institute Alternative has referred to the Ministry of Finance with an initiative to share with MPs, civil society and citizens the original budgetary documents in order that all the actors become equal in its analysis. Until today, we didn’t get the response, not have the required documents been published in machine readable form.
At the moment, the Ministry of Finance does not publish budgetary data in the form that would allow computer data management, comparison to previous years and analysis (e.g. excel document). For example, for all actors outside the Ministry of Finance, the Budget Proposal for year 2015 was available only in the scanned PDF form, which does not allow the search or any computer data processing.
Data published in the (scanned) PDF form are “locked” – they are impossible to manage or to analyze, comparisons, while the search is almost impossible.
Therefore, we appeal to the Ministry of Finance to publish data from the adopted Law on Budget and final accounts of the budget since the year 2010 onward in excel form on their website. Furthermore, we appeal to the Ministry to start implementing the practice of delivering the Budget proposal to the Parliament and publishing it in the excel form (in addition to the usual method of delivery).
We consider that it is necessary to publish excel tables with the following information: receipts and expenditures sorted by type and economic classification (as the general part), as well as the allocation of the budgetary spending units and expenditures by economic classification (special part).
This step would not require any additional efforts for the employees of the Ministry, but only publishing the existing documentation on the website of the Ministry. The national budget is the originally being prepared in excel spreadsheets, from the budget circulars that are fulfilled by the consumer units to the budget proposal composed by the Ministry of Finance.
We remind that publishing of budgetary data in this way is one of the principles of transparency in the field of management of the public resources, by the initiative of Open Government Partnership (OGP), which Montenegro is the part of. Also, this is one of the criteria of the budget transparency insisted on by the organizations that assess countries’ progress in this regard, such as the International Budget Project (Open Budget Index).
Since four months have passed from the moment when we sent the initiative with no response, we are advocating and herewith call to all interested stakeholders to join us in this appeal to the Ministry of Finance.
Marko Sošić
Public Policy Researcher
Commentary of the Institute alternative on the Report of work of the Coordinating Body for Monitoring and Implementation of the Strategy for Development of the Public Procurement System for IV quarter of 2014
When it comes to the development of the public procurement system, the Report is focused on general subjects instead of measures from the AP for implantation of the Strategy. It is not possible to determine from the Action plan that follows the Report what have been done during the last quarter of 2014, since there are no deadlines, measures for further activities are determined descriptively and the activities for 2014 are only listed, without explaining whether the activity have been realized or not.
The Report of work of the Coordinating Body states the European Commission’s evaluation from the Progress Report for 2014 that the annual reporting process and collecting data should be strengthened and points out that the Coordinating Body should give some guidelines and comments in order to contribute that improvement. However, the Report itself only notes the problems and provides framework proposals, instead of concrete ones, for improvement, with undefined deadline “within the following period”. Moreover, the Report only repeats the evaluation, sentences and problems from the past annual reports on public procurement, which means that the system is not being improved.
Institute alternative’s suggestions for improving reporting and collecting data:
§ Within the framework of the Annual report, following information should be published:
a) Number of annexes concluded annually;
b) Information about contracting authorities which have violated the Law on Public Procurement during one year and the type of violation;
§ Within the framework of Quarterly report on the implementation of the Action plan for Chapter 23, following information should be published:
a) The total number of contracts concluded during the reporting period (considering that this information should be available at the Public Procurement Portal)
b) The total number of public procurement contracts published on the local municipalities web – sites, for each municipality individually (considering the fact that this is one of the indicators, but it is not specified how it is going to be reported about the measure).
§ Direct agreements should be publish immediately after the conclusion on the web sites of the contracting authorities;
§ Technically improve Public Procurement Portal in order to enable:
a) The classification of data according to the document type: annex, plans, calls, contracts, tender documentation.
The contents of the Report of Coordinating Body:
It is not the problem whether the inspector works under the auspices of the Inspection Directorate of the Public procurement Directorate, as the Report states, nor the main problem is the “communicating data”. The problem is the capacities of the inspection – 1 inspector and 3 systematized places. Additional problem is that the Action Plan for Chapter 23 predicts December 2016 as the deadline for engagement of the third inspector. This means that it will deviate from the original deadline 3 years.
Also, it is debatable whether the solution to let the Inspection Directorate control both the public procurement procedures and the implementation of the contracts is the best solution, especially after the Amendments to the Law on Public Procurement from December 2014 that have abolished the jurisdiction of the Commission for the Control of Public Procurement Procedures to control the contracts worth more than 500 000 euro. Interim solution might be greater involvement of the State Audit Institution when it comes to control of implementation of the public procurement contracts.
Since the Action Plan for the Chapter 23 stipulates the publishing the contract on the websites of the local governments as one of the measures, this should also affect the compliance with the legal obligation of delivering the contracts concluded by the Public Procurement Directorate, which is also said to represent one of the problems in the Report.
It is necessary to continue working continuously on establishing and strengthening the capacity of the internal audit unit in the system of public internal financial control.
The report states that the Public Procurement Directorate keeps the record of the bidders in a way that only the name of the company and country of headquarters is being kept in the records. However, the problem is that all stakeholders registered on the Public Procurement Directorate website are being recorded as the bidders. Also, the list contains 471 invalid e-mail addresses. Likewise, the list of public procurement officers does not contain updated information, since the names of the officials who do not work more on these tasks still have not been deleted from that list, which should be done after the organ in which they work became “authorities within ministries”.
We appeal to the Ministry of Finance to improve the transparency of the national budget by implementing the practice of budgetary data in the form that would allow the data processing and searching.
In December 2014 during the parliamentary discussion on The Budget Proposal, Institute Alternative has referred to the Ministry of Finance with an initiative to share with MPs, civil society and citizens the original budgetary documents in order that all the actors become equal in its analysis. Until today, we didn’t get the response, not have the required documents been published in machine readable form.
At the moment, the Ministry of Finance does not publish budgetary data in the form that would allow computer data management, comparison to previous years and analysis (e.g. excel document). For example, for all actors outside the Ministry of Finance, the Budget Proposal for year 2015 was available only in the scanned PDF form, which does not allow the search or any computer data processing.
Data published in the (scanned) PDF form are “locked” – they are impossible to manage or to analyze, comparisons, while the search is almost impossible.
Therefore, we appeal to the Ministry of Finance to publish data from the adopted Law on Budget and final accounts of the budget since the year 2010 onward in excel form on their website. Furthermore, we appeal to the Ministry to start implementing the practice of delivering the Budget proposal to the Parliament and publishing it in the excel form (in addition to the usual method of delivery).
We consider that it is necessary to publish excel tables with the following information: receipts and expenditures sorted by type and economic classification (as the general part), as well as the allocation of the budgetary spending units and expenditures by economic classification (special part).
This step would not require any additional efforts for the employees of the Ministry, but only publishing the existing documentation on the website of the Ministry. The national budget is the originally being prepared in excel spreadsheets, from the budget circulars that are fulfilled by the consumer units to the budget proposal composed by the Ministry of Finance.
We remind that publishing of budgetary data in this way is one of the principles of transparency in the field of management of the public resources, by the initiative of Open Government Partnership (OGP), which Montenegro is the part of. Also, this is one of the criteria of the budget transparency insisted on by the organizations that assess countries’ progress in this regard, such as the International Budget Project (Open Budget Index).
Since four months have passed from the moment when we sent the initiative with no response, we are advocating and herewith call to all interested stakeholders to join us in this appeal to the Ministry of Finance.
Marko Sošić
Public Policy Researcher
During the meeting with state auditors and civil society held last week, one of the key issues raised was whether the State Audit Institution (SAI) should file criminal charges and why that hasn’t been done in their thus far.
The reports of SAI list numerous irregularities and illegalities in the field of managing the public funds and property. After almost eleven years of work of SAI and over 120 audit reports, it is time to sanction persistent „offenders“. To our knowledge, SAI hasn’t been filing any criminal charges thus far, neither it has initiated proceeding for compensation of damage or notifies the State prosecutor about damaging the state property.
Criticism addressed to the SAI is legitimate, but no less responsibility lies with the Prosecution, the Police and the other stakeholders as well. The Criminal Procedure Code obliges all state bodies (as well as the bodies of local governments, public companies and institutions) to file criminal charges which should be prosecuted ex officio, of which they are informed or notified otherwise.
The reports of SAI should serve as an indicator to all aforementioned stakeholders, as the starting point for their own audits and filing potential criminal charges. If we reduce this problem to blaming the SAI, we are liberating from the liability all other who are also supposed to do their job properly.
The Prosecution should, at least for the start, notify the SAI and the public what has been done in all cases where the SAI had delivered the documentation related to problematic or negative audit findings.
For years, the SAI has stated that they have insufficient capacities in terms of legal personnel experienced in criminal law. This has to be solved or at least start with solving this issue by increasing the budget of the SAI, hiring new employees or training the already employed.
Law on Budget and Fiscal Accountability, adopted last year, has introduced the misdemeanor provisions for its violation. We advocated this change since 2010, when we have warned that, from all countries in the region, only Montenegro has no sanction in the systematic Budget Law.
This is very important for the SAI, because it will be able to file misdemeanor charges if the Law on budget is violated. Therefore, we expect the start of sanctioning and establishing responsibility
Although the criminal charges are the most interesting for the media and NGOs, there are also other forms of determination of responsibility for acts which don’t have the attribution of the criminal act, but the perpetrators must be punished. It should also be noted that this far no criminal charges have been filed.
In the case of the audit of state guarantees (2013), the SAI states in its report that the subjects of the audit (Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Economy) have not delivered all required documents to the state auditors. This behavior has not been sanctioned, although the Law on State Audit Institution imperatively stipulates that all required documentation must be delivered to state auditors and provides the penalties for the subject who fail to do so.
Marko Sošić
Public Policy Researcher
