Skopje, 21 June 2023 (MIA) - No progress has been made in the public administration reform since it was last monitored in 2019/20, there is a standstill especially in relation to laws on administration and senior civil service, and some progress has been made in relation to accountability, reads the report published Wednesday by the European Policy Institute (EPI) - Skopje on the National PAR Monitor North Macedonia 2021/2022.

In the third systematic Public Administration Reform (PAR) monitoring, EPI points out that in some places where progress was noted during the previous monitoring, there is now a standstill, especially in relation to administration laws. EPI recommends that a law on senior civil service be made, organization of administration bodies, administrative officers and public sector employees because only then progress can be made, especially in the law on senior civil service which the European Commission is waiting for.

"With some of the institutions we investigated, we noticed progress in accountability. They publish their updated data on websites, and the State Audit Office has made the best progress where there is very good cooperation and communication with he public in relation to their work," said EPI senior researcher, Julijana Karai, while presenting the third monitoring.

Karai noted that unlike 2017 and 2018, the Government now publishes much less information.

"In 2017/18, during the first PAR monitoring, there was a really big jump in terms of the the Government publishing information on their work, but that trend both during the previous monitoring, and this one, shows regression, because the Government has not published reports for 2020/21, and there are also some national strategies for which were not able to find to which degree they were implemented. The Government, apart from notifying about agendas, has not published information about documents adopted during their sessions," Karai added.

The monitoring states that the PAR Strategic Framework is the same as the one in 2019/20, in the area of Policy Development and Co-ordination there is regression, the Public Service and the Human Resources Management area is the same as the previous one, Accountability largely remains the same as in the past years, while the biggest progress can be seen in the area of Public Finance Management.

"In this report, there is evident setback in relation to the availability of information on the implemented public procurements and information about public internal financial control and parliamentary. Annual public procurement plans are available on the National e-portal for Public Procurements for all ministries and state institutions, and most public procurement plans are published on the ministries' websites. However, it is worrying that no reports were found on the public procurement for any of the central level contracting authorities that were the subject of the analysis in the last two years," the report reads.

It is encouraging to see that open and competitive procedures are the main method of public procurement, as only 2.45 percent of the contracts have been concluded through the negotiated procedure without publishing a call. ssh/ik/

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