Dear readers,
Over the last 6 years the Programme for Strengthening of Public Institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina has supported the implementation of PAR in Bosnia and Herzegovina and from 2014 with an explicit objective to improve the implementation of PAR measures in the nine selected benficiary institutions. The Programme – which officially started end of 2010 – is based on the agreements between FR Germany and Bosnia and Herzegovina and is being implemented by GIZ on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)jointly with PARCO as the leading executing agency on behalf of the Council of Ministers and further public institutions.
The Programme works in five thematic areas – Communications and Knowledge Management, Human Resource Management, PAR Planning and Coordination, Public Procurement and E-Governance, and Quality Management. Each of these areas of our work is based on the principles and objectives of the PAR Strategy and Revised Action Plan 1 and our strategy was to thus increase the rate of implementation of specific measures defined in the reform areas of PAR but also to innovate and enrich the PAR with initiatives that created added value.
Nowadays the process of developing the new PAR strategic framework is under way and the Programme is – along with other donors and partners – actively supporting it. In this process we are supporting PARCO and other directly involved actors by providing technical expertise for issues such as budgeting, monitoring and evaluation, public consultations and communications of the new PAR strategic framework.
In the last period in each of the aforementioned thematic areas of the Programme we achieved results that contributed to the implementation of PAR not only in our beneficiary institutions but in other institutions as well. We placed efforts into disseminating the results and lessons learned in the inter-institutional working groups to other public institutions through various workshops, conferences and trainings. Two such examples occurred in October and November this year when the Programme organised two conferences – a conference on communications in public administration and a regional conference on quality management. You can read more about these conferences in this issue of the PAR newsletter.
We are also proud of our results achieved in strengthening PARCO as an organisation: during the current implementation phase (from January 2014 until the end of this year) PARCO was supported in improving monitoring and evaluation, donor coordination, communication, HRM, and public procurement capacities. PARCO today is also acting as the Common Assessment Framework (CAF) resource centre for other organisations who are introducing CAF, which is a quality management system for public institutions. Furthermore, according to the recent research done by Centre for Social Research Analitika PARCO today is also the best ranked public institution at the level of BiH when it comes to proactive transparency. With support of the Programme PARCO established new ways of communication such as this very newsletter, newly designed website, and social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube).
Having all this in mind we look forward to continuing our successful cooperation in the upcoming phase of Programme implementation (until mid 2019) where we hope to upscale many of the existing products, best practices and results and to further support the implementation of the public administration reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
I wish you a pleasant and informative reading!
Reinhard Lüke
GIZ Programme Manager, Strengthening of Public Institutions in BiH