Yesterday in Sarajevo, the completion of the second phase of the Programme of Strengthening of Public Institutions in BiH, implemented by the German GIZ, was made official, and the partner in implementation is the Public Administration Reform Coordinator’s Office.
The manager of the programme of Strengthening of Public Institutions in BiH, Reinhard Lueke (GIZ), presented the flow of cooperation in the second phase of programme implementation, some of the key events in the past three years, and the examples of the results the programme has achieved in the five theme fields of activity.
In the second phase of implementation, which would last from the beginning of 2014, to the end of this year, the programme focused on improvement of implementation of the public administration reform through strengthening of the inter-institutional cooperation. The measures the Programme implemented in this period were founded on the measures from the Revised Action Plan 1. Next, there was a brief presentation of the concept of work in the next phase of implementation, from January 2017 to mid 2019.
On this occasion, Lueke thanked the assembled representatives of the partner institutions for the successful cooperation so far, hoping it would continue also in the next period.
Dragan Ćuzulan, the public administration reform coordinator, addressing the attendees, said that the contribution of the Programme of Strengthening of Public Institutions to the public administration reform is reflected in fulfilment of the reform measures at the level of individual institutions through work in theme work groups and through bilateral cooperation with the Programme beneficiary institutions.
Ćuzulan pointed out that the most significant results of the PARCO, achieved through the Programme, were related with the field of proactive transparency and introduction of quality management in public administration.
“Proactive transparency – initiative stemming from the inter-institutional work group for communication and knowledge management, whose activities were based on the measures of the reform area of Institutional Communication. According to fulfilment of the standards of proactive transparency, drafted through this initiative, the PARCO, in the past period advanced significantly and takes a leading place today, which is especially significant, considering that the PARCO should serve as an example in implementation of the reform measures”, said the coordinator.
The second field in which the PARCO achieved significant results is introduction of quality management, which covers the activities of capacity development for the role of the Resource Centre for CAF (Common Assessment Framework) model of quality management, including also a support for implementation of this model in the PARCO, work on development of the framework planning document for sustainable quality management in public administration and capacity development for advisory role of the PARCO in this field.
He reminded that last year the Council of Ministers of BiH discussed and adopted the Annual Report on implementation of the Agreement on implementation of the Programme of Strengthening of Public Institutions in BiH for the period 2014-2015, and enacted conclusions supporting further activities on introduction of the proposed models of quality management in the institutions of BiH (CAF and models based on ISO 9001:2008).
“At the level of the PARCO, the first cycle of self assessment by the CAF model was implemented in November 2015, and after implemented trainings, today, the PARCO is able to offer an advisory assistance and support to other interested institutions of public administration in the process of introduction of the CAF model of quality management and capacity development in that field.
This year, the PARCO started piloting of the CAF with the Civil Service Agency of BiH, the Statistics Agency of BiH and the Agency for Development of Higher Education and Quality Assurance of BiH, and in the next period, it is expected to widen the number of institutions that would be included in the process of CAF self-assessment.
“Cooperation through the Programme is especially significant regarding the process of draft of the new strategic framework of public administration reform 2016 – 2020”, stressed Ćuzulan.