E-kapija: Efficient and modern public administration represents a very important factor in whole development of economy and the improvement of concurrence of domestic products, while inefficiency results in weak services and it always goes against its users, citizens.
Because of that, public administration reform, which is, according to all researches in BiH, still slow and does not satisfy needs of users, something that will need to be worked on faster in order to pass the road towards the EU Integration. One of the ways to make it more efficient is its informatization, as the practice has shown in some other countries.
Projects, which are currently being implemented by the Public Administration Reform Coordinator’s Office, are going in that direction. One of them is establishing the centralized budget management information system (BMIS), which will quicken procedures of drafting budget and improve coordination between ministries at all government levels. The contract with the consortium that will work on implementation of this project, has already been signed, and stipulated has been that the project will be implemented at all four government levels. It is about the system based on centralized databases that will be placed in ministries of finance.
By the BMIS introduction, all the budget institutions will be able to access the budget preparation over an online database, which will represent a significant improvement. "By now, institutions have been doing their budget requests manually, in Excel format, where there is a big possibility of errors while entering data. By the BMIS implementation, all the budget institutions will have an improved data content, data entering and report, as well as transparency with instant strengthening fiscal discipline in Bosnia and Herzegovina", has been explained by Semiha Borovac, National PAR Coordinator.
With the same goal, she says, one more project related to drafting and establishing interoperability framework and standards for data exchange inside public administration, is being implemented. This project, she says, represents a key assumption for establishing basis for successful functioning of the electronic services system in the area of public administration in BiH. This way, the existing information systems will be connected in order to be available to all administrative levels, which will enable an efficient interaction of government authorities, which has not been a practice by now. One of the important things of an interest for citizens is that it will enable citizens to reach their rights and obligations electronically. "This will represent significant saving of money and time for citizens, as well as an obligation of government authorities of not requiring an officially evidenced data from citizens", Borovac has explained. She says that this will be possible through a joint harmonization and connection of public registrars.
Significant component of project is also development of following legislation and guidelines in a sense of standards and drafting guidebooks that will assist in applying the interoperability principle. The PAR Coordinator also states the project objective; creating and adopting interoperability framework at all administrative levels. The project will also develop strategic document called "E-government interoperability framework", which will be in accordance to the EU standards, or to the document "EU Interoperability Framework".
Anyway, these projects are being financed from the PAR Fund, which has been stipulated as a source of financing technical and professional assistance in implementing projects defined on basis of activities predicted by the Action Plan 1 of the PAR Strategy in BiH. As a reminder, these are only two from the total of seven projects, which are in the process of realization and which have the same goal: reform of this area.