Political managing of the public administration reform process is significantly absent, said Mr. Suad Musić, Deputy BiH Public Administration Reform Coordinator at the Session of the Joint Comitee for European Integration of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH held today in Sarajevo. Progress Report of the Public Administration Reform Strategy has been also discussed at this session.
Speaking about the need for public administration reform, Mr. Musić stressed that the PAR process has been initiated as precondition for further progress of BiH in the European Union and that only minor parts of the reform are orientated toward BH citizens.
”The European Commission pays much more attention to the PAR than we do. There is no subordination in the whole process", said mr. Musić adding that because of the current status of the Public Administration Reform Coordinator’s Office, instruments do not exist for efficient coordination of this process.A concrete example is represented through enactment of the Law on Civil Service and the Law on salaries on all administrative levels, where they had no obligation to even inform the Public Administration Reform Coordinator's Office.
As a model of good practice in the region, Musić mentioned the operations of the PAR Fund.
Altough 10. 757. 000 KM has been invested in this fund by foreign donors, there is fear that the fund budget could be drained by midyear. Because of this reason, the Fund needs further donor investments as well as entities contribution.
The Public Administration Reform Fund approved financing of 14 projects. Only one of them is for the Brcko District, and the others are common projects for all governing levels, emphasized Mr. Musić.
According to him, the PAR Process needs to be observed from the perspective of citizen's needs and quality of services provided to citizens, business environment and public sector. This will contribute to putting the public administration into the service of citizens as well as economic development. He also considers that is essential to promote and support current PAR process as critical point of successful EU integration's process and identify political responsibility issue and support development of plan for building institutional capacities by the Acquis. (Action plan 2).
Even is many expect us to decrease the bureaucratic apparatus, the PAR can not substitute eventual constitution reform. The Stabilization and Association Agreement provisions about PAR as well as PAR goals should be taken into consideration in political dialogue on PAR or organisation of BiH, emphasized the Deputy BiH Public Administration Reform Coordinator.
After the discussion, the members of the Joint Committee for European Integration were informed about PAR Progress report for 2009.