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Initiative: Increase Transparency of the Government’s work

It will soon be a month since we wrote to the Government and called for greater transparency in the work through three concrete steps regarding the availability of information on the work and decision-making of the Government and its working bodies. We have not yet received the answer or noticed a change in practice.

It is necessary for citizens to be informed about the Government’s work and to have access to key documents on the Government’s agenda, regardless of the format of the session, while increasing transparency by publishing basic information on the work of Government’s commissions.

We proposed to the Government to adopt new practices and change those with which it started its mandate, in order to truly work in the spirit of the promise of publicity of the work from the Expose. In order to increase citizens’ trust in their work and provide comprehensive information on the decisions it makes, the Government need to take three steps:

  1. Publishing of the complete agenda of the Government’s sessions

In cases when materials marked with  certain degree of secrecy is discussed at the Government’s sessions, except that material is not published, the public can not even know that it was on the agenda of the session because the name of the material is excluded from the agenda. As the legal provisions defining data confidentiality are broad, in the mandate of the previous government this possibility was used for the various cases: for from contracts and decisions to redirecting money between budget units and using the budgetary reserve.

According to the IA’s research, based on the minutes from the Government’s sessions obtained through FOI, in the mandate of the previous Government, out of the total number of the items on agenda, more than 10% were completely hidden form the public (12.3%).

Understanding the need of the Government to decide or discuss classified materials in exceptional cases, it is unacceptable for the public not to be informed that they were on agenda at all, the classification number of the act and exact level of secrecy that could serve to gain access to them after the expiration of the secrecy period.

  1. Publishing materials decided without holding a session

The Government began its mandate with the bad practice of not publishing the materials discussed without holding a session. In less than five months of the new Government’s work, the Government considered and adopted decisions 32 times without holding a session. That is more often than regular weekly sessions (of which there were 21 in the same period).

In this way, the Government discussed and decided on 62 items on the agenda, not including numerous personnel issues, without these materials being published on the Government’s portal. These are draft laws, decisions, information, conclusions, but also personnel decisions, which in some cases are only mentioned in government’s announcements, so that no details are given about which positions and persons were discussed or decided.

Deciding on certain issues without holding a session in urgent and particularly justified cases is provided by the Decree on the Government. This Decree also prescribes that the work of the Government is public. Publishing acts of the Government is particularly important for those types of material for which there is no obligation to publish in the Official Gazette. It is not for the Government to publish a statement in which it will briefly explain what was discussed. Citizens have the right to access complete documents and adopted conclusions. It is especially problematic that in this aspect the new Government has taken a step backwards compared to the previous one, which published materials from such sessions.

  1. Publishing data on the work of Government’s working bodies

It is necessary for the citizens to have basic information on the work of Government’s commissions, permanent and temporary working bodies. The four permanent Government’s working bodies (Commission for Political System, Internal and Foreign Policy; Commission for Economic Policy and Financial System; Commission for Personnel and Administrative Affairs; Commission for Allocation of Funds from Budgetary Reserve) have numerous and significant competencies, from their role in recruitment procedures and appointments to the discretionary allocation of funds to individuals  and legal entities.

Currently, there is no practice of publishing information on the sessions or on the overall activities of the four permanent or temporary working bodies of the Government.  In the previous period, even the most basic information about the work of some of them was declared secret by the General-Secretariat of the Government.

Transparency in practice, not only in the Expose

Having in mind all the listed issues, and after a whole decade of validity, it is necessary to  amend the Decision on Publishing Materials from the Session of the Government of Montenegro from 2011, and improve the openness of the Government in three important aspects:

    1. Publishing the complete agendas, which will also include the items marked with the degree of secrecy, the classification number of the act as well as the degree of secrecy declared, so that the public knows in which period the expiration date expires (two year for the degree “internally”, five years for degree “confidential” or some other)
    2. Integral publishing of all materials and decisions considered and adopted by Government without holding a session, in the same way as when the session is held.
    3. Publishing of basic information on the work of the Government’s working bodies (commissions).

In this way, the previous bad practices will be corrected and the level of openness of the work of the Government and its working bodies will be raised.

Marko Sošić
Institute Alternative

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Implementation of the New Public Procurement Law: A Chance to Leave the Vicious Circle

Although the new PPL is largely harmonised with the EU Directives – just as the previous Law, which was implemented as of May 2015, was harmonised with the Directives applicable at that time – its implementation is threatening to become a stumbling block. The initial six months of its implementation showed a lack of consistent implementation of some of the provisions from the Law and the secondary legislation, and the potential for the new concepts, such as market analysis, to bring more damage than benefits to the public procurement system.

Inadequate planning and failure to deliver on the plans remain the key weaknesses in the management of this segment of public spending. For the most part, the Rulebook on the method of conducting simple procurement resolved the issues attached to low-value procurement. Still, in practice, these procurement and must be kept under the constant scrutiny of the Public Procurement Inspectorate, in order to ensure consistent application of the rules. Furthermore, it is very important to prevent abuse of simple procurement and to use them for the purpose of simplified procedures, faster procurement and lower procurement costs. Unfortunately, control of contract performance failed to deliver on the announcements made by the Ministry of Finance, since contract performance reports contained very few or no new data when compared with the contents of the contract. Inadequate monitoring of contract performance, both internal and external, is another chronic shortcoming of the public procurement system.

Provided no reoccurrence of the situation from 2017 – of a course of action contrary to harmonisation with the EU regulations – the current provisions may serve as a good basis for further strengthening and upgrades of the public procurement system.

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What has the new Public Procurement Law brought us?

The new Law on Public Procurement has brought obligations and more work to contracting authorities, has made procedures easier for the bidders and improved transparency and competitiveness of public procurement procedures.

This is stated by contracting authorities that participated in the meeting organised by Institute Alternative on the occasion of presenting the preliminary findings on the monitoring of the implementation of the new concepts from the Law on Public Procurement (PPL). Implementation of the new PP Law started on July 7, 2020.

They estimate that the new PPL has improved the system and brought the Montenegrin legislation in the field of public procurement closer to the legislation of the European Union.

The new PPL brought a number of novelties, and the implementation of new mechanisms and concepts of the Law in the second half of 2020 were the subject of monitoring by the Institute Alternative on a sample of all ministries and municipalities.

The initial six months of implementation showed a lack of consistent implementation of some of the provisions from the Law and the secondary legislation, and the potential for the new concepts, such as market analysis, to bring more damage than benefits to the public procurement system. Inadequate planning and failure to deliver on the plans remain the key weaknesses in the management of this segment of public spending.

For the most part, the Rulebook on the method of conducting simple procurement resolved the issues attached to low-value procurement. Still, in practice, these procurement must be kept under the constant scrutiny of the Public Procurement Inspectorate, in order to ensure consistent application of the rules. Furthermore, it is very important to prevent abuse of simple procurement and to use them for the purpose of simplified procedures, faster procurement and lower procurement costs.

Unfortunately, control of contract performance failed to deliver on the announcements made by the Ministry of Finance, since contract performance reports contained very few or no new data when compared with the contents of the contract. Inadequate monitoring of contract performance, both internal and external, is another chronic shortcoming of the public procurement system.

The aim of the meeting was to present to the contracting authorities included in the research preliminary findings on the monitoring of the implementation of the new mechanisms and concepts under the PPL – market analysis, most economically advantageous tender as the sole evaluation criterion, report on contract performance, simply procurement, as well as planning and execution of the budget for public procurement.

The meeting was also attended by representative of the Directorate for Public Procurement Policy of the Ministry of Finance and Social Welfare, as an institution that performs institutional monitoring of the public procurement system in Montenegro.

The meeting brought together almost 50 participants via the Zoom platform and live, in compliance with measures to combat the Corona virus.

Watch the experiences of the contracting authorities and the main conclusions from the meeting in a short video (in Montenegrin):

The meeting with contracting authorities was organised within the project “For the Better Use of Public Money!”, implemented by the Institute Alternative with the financial support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The opinions and views expressed in this video do not necessarily reflect those of the Embassy.

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Intensify and Improve the Work of Parliamentary Committees

Only two of the 14 parliamentary committees adopted work plans for this year during first quarter, while two committees have not held a single session since their constitution in mid-December last year.

According to the information available on the website of the Parliament, only the Committee on International Relations and Emigrants has adopted work plan for 2021, with the Security and Defense Committee, which according to a special law, adopts a plan of parliamentary oversight in the security and defense sector. Two committees, for European integration and anticorruption, have not held a single session since their constitution in mid-December last year. We express the expectation that the drafting of the Government’s Work Programme for 2021 will intensify the work and enable the planning of parliamentary oversight by all committees.

The new parliamentary convocation made a step forward by enabling video streaming of sessions (live streaming), a chronology of debates in plenary sessions, and the launch of a parliamentary TV channel.  We expect that the announced publication of the chronology of debates and transcripts from committee sessions will further improve the publicity of the Parliament’s work, considering that the minutes from the committee sessions are still not published and compiled in a timely manner. Minutes are currently not available for more than half (29) of the total committee session (51).

We also believe that parliamentary oversight should be accompanied by additional performance indicators, which were missing in the recently adopted Action Plan for strengthening the legislative and control role of the Parliament of Montenegro in 2021. We note that MPs have repeatedly publicly indicated the frequency of non-delivery of requested information by the executive, despite their clearly prescribed right to access all official materials, documents and data prepared or collected in committees or the Parliamentary  Service, Government, ministries and others state administration bodies, which refer to issues of importance for the exercise of the parliamentary function.

As “accountability“ but also the delivery of requested information by the executive is essential for the effectiveness of parliamentary oversight, we believe that the Parliament should pay special attention to the delivery of information requested by MPs. Failure to provide this information should also be accompanied by sanctions, which should be the subject of the announced Law on Parliament.

Milena Muk
Public Policy Researcher at Institute Alternative