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Successful Training of Political Science Students

Five students from the Faculty of Political Science completed a month-long intensive training at Institute alternative within the project “Active Students for Sustainable Development“ that we are implementing in cooperation with Centre for Civic Education.

From 22 February to 22 March, five students from the Faculty of Political Science had an opportunity to go through a training within Institute Alternative programme areas. Before the start of the training, the interns participated in a workshop on the basics and the cycle of public policy, focusing on monitoring and implementation that are often lacking in Montenegro, as well as the financial aspects of public policy.

The interns worked under the mentorship of our researchers, where they covered topics from our programme areas: public administration reform, parliamentary oversight of the security sector, public procurement at the local level, as well as financing of local self-administrations.

The goal of the project is improving the skills of students in the final years of their studies at the Faculty of Political Science through strengthening capacities and cooperation of educational institutions and research centres.

The project “Active Students for Sustainable Development is financed by the European Union through the Directorate for Finance and Contracting of the EU Assistance Funds (CFCU) of Ministry of Finance within the programme ”Transfer of Knowledge between the Sector of Higher Education, Science and Industry“

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Interview: Civil Society Voice Limited Due To Political Constraints

Over the years, Institute Alternative has become recognized as an organization which is critically oriented towards police, but whose aim is to help them improve its functioning, stated Dina Bajramspahić in an interview with the POINTPULSE.

By Mateja Agatonović (BCSP)

What is the biggest impact of your organization in tackling police corruption?

Our vision is the transparent, accountable and efficient police serving the citizens. Although we are aware that this task is not achievable easily in Montenegro nowadays, we are using all available channels to influence this rigid system – from civil society pressure through media and public events, over direct advocacy activities through communication with senior managers in the police, to the bottom-up approach.

We believe that reform efforts are much more likely to succeed if they are supported by police officers as agents of change, who have knowledge, skills, and insights that can be priceless in this process. We believe that this comprehensive approach enables us to get a clear picture of problems in the police and to make our recommendations more realistic and implementable.

IA has participated in numerous working groups and public debates and has contributed to the preparation of laws, strategies and action plans regulating the functioning of the police. Many of our proposals were adopted and became part of official documents so we are now focused on their implementation.

What are the challenges that you face in your communication with the police?

Access to information of public importance is still a key problem. Information is still lacking, including important statistics that allegedly are not being produced. There are multiple layers of communication with the police so we try to overcome this problem with interviews and focus groups.

Over the years, IA has become recognized as an organization which is critically oriented towards police, but whose aim is to help them improve its functioning. There are police officers and inspectors who appreciate our work, our recommendations and with whom we are in constant communication. I would say that we both see our partnership as beneficial. On the other hand, police in Montenegro is still under the political influence. Therefore, our input sometimes remains limited due to political constraints.

What are the benefits and drawbacks of civil society networking on a regional level?

Regional experience and first-hand information help us have a more objective perspective and assess police reform in Montenegro more objectively since we get a broader picture. Equally important, we are informed by partners about how certain legal solutions, that seem fine on paper, actually function in practice. And finally, regional peer pressure and the competitive moment are also important, as we get more attention from institutions because they are curious about their results compared to other countries.

Interview originally published at POINTPULSE website.

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My Money – Budget Visualization

We proudly present our new web portal — www.mojnovac.me – the very first visualisation of the state budget in Montenegro prepared by the civil society.

One of the main principles of our work is the belief that the budget is not a technicality that should be left to the auditors and accountants, but the ultimate expression of the government’s priorities and embodiment of public policies. Therefore, we want to contribute to better understanding of the budget and its availability to citizens by making the budgetary data only a click away from those who want to know more about it.

Data scattered over various websites, buried in a bunch of tables and locked in scanned PDFs, unsearchable and without explanations, cannot be of great use to citizens.

This is why we decided to “unlock” the data – to convert official documents into a searchable, citizen-friendly database that will allow anyone to quickly find an answer to budgetary questions at a single place.

This was the thinking behind designing My Money, a portal where you can find out:

  • How the state budget is collected, how is it spent – economic classification of the budget down to the most detailed publicly available level, with comparison by years.
  • How institutions spend their budgets – you can easily find the institution of your interest and its budget by years, with specific data for different budgetary programs and budgetary items.
  • Which projects make up the capital budget – what has the state promised to build, reconstruct or at least design and plan.

On the web portal, you can also find the Budget Glossary, as well as the Budgetary Library – collection of all the important legal acts regulating the budgetary system, including the integral annual budgets and year-end reports.

My Money contains more than 70 000 budget items and covers the period of seven years – each single number from seven budgetary cycles found its place on our web portal.

We hope this tool will make life easier for all of you dealing with budget issues in your everyday work, or empower those of you that are yet to deal with budget. Whatever you do, the trail of the money must be the basis of each argument when analysing, implementing, monitoring, criticising, praising or changing a public policy.

My Money was prepared and launched within the project “Promoting financial accountability in Montenegro”, financially supported by the British Embassy in Podgorica. We promise that we will continue to update the portal, improve it and enrich with new data.

Send us your impressions, comments and suggestions at info@institut-alternativa.org.

P.S.

We claim that our visualisation is simple and clear, but just in case, take a look at the short tutorial – the roadmap to key components of the web portal:

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Minister Pribilović joined the persecution of unwanted NGOs

Minister Suzana Pribilović decided not to select Stevo Muk, the candidate of the Institute alternative, for the member of the Council for Public Administration Reform.

Thus, the Institute alternative that has advocated for years for the full participation of NGOs in coordination bodies to monitor public administration reform eventually became unwelcome in the Council, which composition, after our efforts, was extended to representatives of non-governmental sector.
To remind, the Government adopted the Decision on the establishment of the Council for the monitoring of public administration reform in October last year. Its mandate is to monitor the implementation of the Public Administration Reform Strategy for the period 2016-2020, as well as other regulations and activities in connection with this reform.

Minister of Public Administration selected the candidate of the Center for Democratic Transition (CDT) to be a member of the Council, based on solely one criterion: the number of NGOs that have proposed and supported the candidate.

However, the application of CDT is supported by non-governmental organizations, where most of them do not address the issue of public administration reform through their work.

Among the organizations which, according to Minister Pribilović, are covering “PAR” areas, are organizations dealing with “musical heritage”, “prevention of getting stroke, educational lectures on stroke and help to persons who have survived a stroke”, “reactions to environmental incidents”, “reducing poverty “, “social care for children and young people “, “gathering of agricultural producers”, and so on.

Despite all of this, Minister Pribilović has accepted those candidacies as valid, and declared them for legitimate proponents.

Accepting all 23 organizations as legitimate proposers is contrary to public tender and the Regulation on cooperation between state administration and NGOs.

She was obliged to access the fulfillment of the criteria laid down by the call. Among other things, the organization that supports the candidacy had to have carried out at least one activity in connection with the task of the Council for Public Administration Reform during the previous year.

We remind the Minister and the public:

  • When working group for drafting the Public Administration Reform Strategy was formed, the only candidate for membership from civil sector was the candidate of Institute alternative;
  • When NGOs were invited to submit written comments on the draft text of the Public Administration Reform Strategy – only Institute alternative has done so;
  • On the public debate about the draft of Public Administration Reform Strategy -only three non-governmental organizations appeared. From these three NGOs, there were none of those that are among 23 organizations that supported the candidate of CDT;
  • When the first Report on the implementation of the Public Administration Strategy was published, Institute alternative is the only NGO that has made public comments.

Apropos, the Institute alternative is the only NGO that systematically monitors the implementation of the Strategy with the support of the European Union.

Obviously, all these are the reasons for our Minister to declare us ineligible for membership in the Council.

Bearing in mind ignoring previous experience of organizations that have proposed Stevo Muk for membership in the Council, we will initiate proceedings before the Administrative Court for the annulment of such a Decision of the Ministry of Public Administration.

IA Team

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Press release: Mysterious Mathematics of Local Sector Employment

The most recent aims of Public Administration Reform do not entail putting to an end practices of excessive employment in Montenegrin municipalities

According to the report on implementation of the Action Plan of the 2016-2020 Public Administration Reform Strategy, the number of employees in municipalities increased for 441 in 2016, while the data for three municipalities (Berane, Plav and Pljevlja) are missing.

In the same document, for the first time, the Government defines the goal of downsizing local administration for around 600 employees. In the following lines, the Government denies what it has previously stated, because it argues that presented data do not necessarily imply an increase of number of employees. In the majority of cases, the Government argues, the increase occurred due to the alignment of already filled job positions with the legal amendments. However, the public remains deprived of concrete information of the actual state of affairs and tangible goals in this area.

In other words, following issues are still puzzling:

  • What legal changes imposed this alignment of job positions in municipalities, when the amendments to the Law on Local Administration and the Law on Civil Servants and State Employees are ongoing, and former legal framework is in force?
  • What is the state of affairs in 3 municipalities, for which the data have not been submitted in the report?
  • On what grounds, did the Government decide to reduce size od local administrations for 600 employees?

The first report on the implementation of the Public Administration Reform Strategy contains other ambiguities. For example, the report presents that the Central Human Resource Register, information system which should serve as a guide for human resource management in state administration, contains 85% of the required data. Yet, this is followed by the claim that assessment of the timeliness and comprehensiveness of data entered into this register is still ongoing. A logical question arises: What is the basis of assessment of the 85% of completeness of the Register?

Within the project “Civil Society for Good Governance: to Act and Account!” and with the support of European Union, Institute Alternative is also monitoring the implementation of the 2016-2020 Public Administration Reform Strategy.

We will publish the first monitoring report by mid-2017.

Follow http://mojauprava.me/ for more information.

Milena Milošević
Public Policy Researcher