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Transparify: IA Among the Most Transparent Think Tanks in the World

Five stars again! Our status of the highly transparent research center has once again been confirmed in the new survey by Transparify.

Institute Alternative has been declared, second year in a row, to be one of the most transparent research centers in world, according to the survey conducted by international non-profit organization Transparify.

Research centers included in this survey were ranked according to the extent of disclosure of where their funding comes from.

From the total number of the think tank organizations included in this survey (160 from 47 worlds countries), only 31 got five star, of which three are in Montenegro. Apart from us, Center for Research and Monitoring as well as Center for Democratic Transition were awarded with five-star status.

The complete report can be read here

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Press Release: More employees in the municipalities

The number of employees in Montenegrin municipalities has increased by more than 1200 in comparison to the year 2012, despite the announcements that this number would be rationalized in accordance to quotas established beforehand as well as with regulations stipulated in the Public Sector Internal Reorganisation Plan.

On September 30th 2014, Montenegrin local governments had around 12000 members of staff including all administrative authorities, institutions and companies founded by the municipalities. This number of civil servants and employees is significantly higher than the one stated in the information given by the Ministry of Finance from 2012, which has also been evaluated as exceptionally high in the Public Sector Internal Reorganisation Plan. The Plan offers a projection than municipalities have more than 1000 member of staff than needed, and suggests reducing this number until the end of year 2016, in accordance to the established annual dynamic. Nevertheless, recently published data show that almost all municipalities have increased the number of employees. In two-year period, more than 1200 new members of staff have been employed, with Berane, Nikšić, Pljevlja and Podgorica as municipalities which were the leaders in this trend.

The policy of the permanent employment which is not based on human resources planning, analysis and real necessities does not contribute to the consolidation of the public finances. As a reminder, total debt of the local government is around 348, 89 million euros.

The municipalities do not fulfill the other requirements as well which are related to the reform of the civil servant system and so far none has prepared the analysis on maximum number of officers, neither the plan to reduce the number of employees, while the relatively small number of municipalities has adopted new Rulebooks on Internal Organization and Systematization. Moreover, the capacities of local governments to manage human resources are extremely limited.

Even the competent state authorities do not contribute to the improvement of the transparency of the procedure of employment and promotion at work, considering the fact that more than two years have passed since the beginning of the application of the Law on civil servants and state employees, and not even the prerequisites have been fulfilled nor adopted.

The previous steps in the rationalization of the number of employees do not offer enough space for the optimism when talking about depoliticization and professionalization of the public administration in Montenegro, especially taking into account the context of the negotiations for the full membership in the European Union, where the reform of the public administration is the umbrella for all other reforms as well as one of the requirements for the advancement in the process.

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Infographic: What have the MPs done with the budget for 2015

The Budget Proposal for 2015 has been submitted to the Parliament earlier than ever before, thanks to the amendments on the Systemic and Organic Law on the Budget and budget calendar. We have been researching if more time spent on reviewing the budget has affected the intensity of MP’s activity and how different is the budget that MPs have adopted from the one that the Government has delivered as a Proposal.

On the Budget Proposal for 2015 total amount of 70 amendments have been submitted. Total amount of funds that was wanted to be reallocated by those amendments amounts around 68 million euro, or more than 10% of current budget. Only 18 amendments out of 70 have been adopted, among them only one opposition’s amendment, with the least amount of reallocation of funds out of 70 proposed amendments (€ 8,400).

Almost every parliamentary Committee have considered the Budget Proposal for 2015. They have submitted their own vision of the Budget in almost identical form which contains the recommendation to adopt the budget, with a few exceptions, mostly by shifting the responsibility for the amending at the Committee on Economy, Finance and Budget.

The Institute alternative has researched the impact that the Parliament had on the budget at the phase of its adoption, with the critical review of the manner of conducting amending and discussing at the Committees. Some of the key findings about to whom have the MPs reduced or increased the budget, what new has been adopted and how the discussion in the Committees have been developing look at the infographic we have prepared.

(Click for better resolution)

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New project: Western Balkans Pulse For Police Integrity and Trust (POINTPULSE)

Institute Alternative, together with four partner organizations, has started the implementation of the new project “Western Balkans Pulse For Police Integrity and Trust (POINTPULSE)”. The leading organization in the regional network is The Belgrade Centre for Security Policy (BCSP), while the other partners are: BIRN Serbia, the Centre for Security Studies from Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as the Kosovar Center for Center for Security Studies.

Overall objective(s): Contribute to increased trust and confidence in the law enforcement agencies in the Western Balkans by fighting police corruption and promoting police integrity.

Specific objective(s): Established regional civilian oversight network in the Western Balkans fully competent to understand and monitor the state of police integrity and advocate for policy changes in the region.

Activities

The project partners will implement the following activities:

1. Establishing the fully functional oversight network of civil society organizations: Western Balkans Pulse for Police Integrity and Trust (POINTPULSE).
2. Developing POINTPULSE methodological framework for analysing police corruption and providing a coherent, comprehensive framework for assessing the state of play regarding police integrity.
3. Monitoring and benchmarking police integrity in the Western Balkans (including public opinion survey, production of analysis, country reports and annual report).
4. Influencing policy makers and raising awareness on police integrity (including working breakfast with representatives of the regional initiatives, panel discussions, online POINTPULSE platform, media feature stories and annual conference).

Results

1. POINTPULSE network established with participation of five regional civil society organizations and with clear organizational structure.
2. POINTPULSE network structured 3 strategic tracks for opportunities on expanded policy dialogue with law enforcement agencies in the four Western Balkans countries and with 4 regional initiatives (RCC, RAI, SELEC and SEPCA) on critical police integrity issues.
3. Strengthened capacities of 5 civil society organizations from 4 Western Balkans countries for monitoring and benchmarking police integrity.
4. POINTPULSE network developed a civilian oversight tracking system for benchmarking police integrity, which includes a gender dimension.
5. POINTPULSE network assessed the effects of police officers ‘violations on the public trust in police force in the 4 Western Balkans countries.
6. POINTPULSE network informed policy community in Europe on police integrity developments in the Western Balkans.

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Press Release: “High-Level Corruption” Term Not to be Used for Manipulations

Institute Alternative invites Montenegrin MPs to remove the definition of “high corruption” from the Draft Law on Special State Prosecutor’s Office. The current definition of the term enables conducting manipulative statistics as well as inaccurate reporting to the domestic and international public.

This definition is partly related to the criminal offenses carried out by official, especially to: malfeasance in office, fraud, illegal influence, incitement to illegal influence, active or passive bribery.

However, the term “public official” is exceptionally broadly defined in Montenegrin legislation. Apart from high-level public officials, such as Prime minister, ministers or MPs, it includes all others who were appointed or elected as officials in state or local bodies, regulatory and independent bodies, state companies and institutions, as well as other legal entities exercising public authorities.

Taking into account this very broad definition of “public official”, Institute Alternative also considers that the term “high corruption” is very broadly defined in the Draft Law on the Special Prosecutor’s Office. As such, it does not correspond to the need to recognize criminal offenses carried out by the highest public officials as the high corruption, since they are the ones who have the primary responsibility to achieve the public interest.

Namely, if this definition was adopted, the high corruption would include even the crimes committed, for example, by inspectors, Secretary of the Ministry or Assistant of Head of the state authority. In its second part, the definition of high-level corruption is also problematic because it involves obtaining material gain of more than 40 000 euros, by perpetrating the criminal offenses such as abuse of position in business operations and mismanagement of the economy.

However, perpetration of these offenses according to the Draft Law is not limited to state companies, which leaves the possibility of considering some criminal offenses as high corruption even if they have no connection with public resources or income, i.e. the crimes that are committed by persons working in private companies.

Therefore, Institute Alternative advocates to remove the definition of the high corruption or, at least to limit it to the high-level public officials.

In doing so, we do not consider that the Special Prosecution should not have the competence to deal with corruption acts perpetrated by all public officials. However, the classification of aforementioned into “high corruption”, which does not exist as a separate legal term although established as one of the main requirements of the accession of Montenegro to the European Union, represents an attempt of manipulation of the public but also the European Union.

We hereby appeal to MPs to improve the current Draft Law and to redefine these debatable terms in order to hinder the institutions of simulating the fight against the high-level corruption by including, without any additional criteria, all public officials into the definition, from the inspector to the prime minister, as well as those who are not even the public officials.

Stevo MUK
President of the Managing Board

 

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Workshop at Hertie School of Governance

Researchers at Institute alternative, Marko Sošić and Jovana Marović have participated in a two – day training organized by Hertie Shcool of governance from Berlin. The workshop has been held within the framework of the Regional Research Promotion Program in the Western Balkans (RRPP), the project “Policy Evaluation and Performance Audit – On the Same or Parallel Tracks?” on 9 and 10 of February 2015.

The workshop was devised by a team of professionals of the Hertie School of Governance within the academic mentoring in this project. Besides the representatives of Institute alternative, representatives of the two other TEN Network members – Centre for European Policy (CEP) from Belgrade and European Policy Institute (EPI) from Skopje. The participants have worked on promoting qualitative research methodology, as well as on training for introduction of quantitative research techniques for collecting data and complementing research.

More about the research project Policy Evaluation and Performance Audit – On the Same or Parallel Tracks? and about TEN Network you can find on following links:

http://www.rrpp-westernbalkans.net/en/News/Performance-Audit-and-Policy-Evaluation–On-the-Same-or-Parallel-Tracks-.html

http://ten.europeanpolicy.org/