Yesterday, members of the Advisory Council for the implementation of the Partnership for Open Government Initiative from the administrative bodies of Bosnia and Herzegovina at the session of this body held in Sarajevo presented the activities of the institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina on the fulfillment of measures from the Action Plan of the Council of Ministers of BiH for the implementation of the Partnership for Open Government Initiative for the period 2022.-2024.
The Action Plan for the implementation of the OGP Initiative in BiH contains 10 measures that must be completed by the end of 2024: Agency for Statistics of BiH, Agency for Prevention of Corruption and Coordination of the Fight Against Corruption, Ministry of Finance and Treasury of BiH, Ministry of Justice of BiH, Public Procurement Agency of BiH, the BiH Agency for Gender Equality of the Ministry of Human Rights and Refugees of BiH and the Public Administration Reform Coordinator’s Office. The main priority areas to which the measures and activities of the Action Plan are directed are: open data; public procurement, anti-corruption, budget transparency, the importance of regulating real ownership issues, and free access to information.
At the session, it was noted that so far the Agency for Public Procurement of BiH and the Agency for Gender Equality of BiH have fulfilled the measures they were responsible for, and that the Agency for Prevention of Corruption and Coordination of the Fight Against Corruption has fulfilled one of the two measures related to the improvement of proactive transparency in the processes of allocation of financial resources from the budget. Other institutions, as stated in the plan, are still in various stages of implementation of the measures. The implementation of the activities is monitored by civil society organizations: Transparency International, CPI Foundation, Why not and the Center for Investigative Journalism, which have their representatives in the Advisory Council of the OGP Initiative in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Open Government Partnership (OGP) is a global multilateral initiative for the transparency and openness of the work of public authorities, and its participants are countries that, by becoming members of the Partnership, commit themselves to concrete measures and actions in the areas of transparency, strengthening citizen participation in authorities, the fight against corruption and the introduction of new technologies that make public administration as efficient as possible. Bosnia and Herzegovina has been a member of this body since 2014, and the development and implementation of the Action Plan is the most important component of a country’s participation in the Partnership for Open Government, because with it the country expresses its commitment to the basic principles of the Partnership, assuming ambitious, concrete commitments that significantly improve the current situation within these values. As a member of the Initiative, Bosnia and Herzegovina supports its principles, which are in accordance with the general principles and reform of public administration, with a focus on creating an efficient, transparent, responsible, modern public administration, which will base its work on the best practices and principles of the European administrative space and to truly work for the benefit of citizens, by providing fast and reliable services.