Kosovo still faces challenges in Public Administration

At the beginning of the discussion, the findings and recommendations of policy analysis have been presented with the title: “Policy-making System in Kosovo: A view of systemic challenges and potential reform directions”.

Albana Rexha, a researcher in the Group for Jury and Political Studies, has said that public administration faces challenges, while the other find here has been cited as lack of accounting mechanisation.

“System or public administration faces an enormous number of challenges, including a huge number of independent institutions that function, an unreformed wage system, which means that civil servants who do the same, are paid differently, third, there is a lack of recruiting and promoting civil service based on merit, and there's an inefficient co-ordination of policies which results in a vast number of sector strategies, so by presenting a prioritation of priorities which remain in most of the priorities of even the tops of the (1)1) were expressed.

Present on this occasion was Public Administration Minister Mahir Jagcilar, who has said this challenge is social and state and that the path to the EU must continue reforms in political administration.

Kosovo's 2017 Sigma monitoring report provides a comprehensive review of the country's progress and challenges regarding public administration. Kosovo, despite the problems we have, does not fare badly in relation to most cases, perhaps even on average or beyond average, in terms of strategic framework for public administration reform, Kosovo stands very well and is above the regional average when it comes to the quality of the strategic framework of public administration reform, the effectiveness of implementation, and monitoring and reporting in a comprehensive sense. But it is then required in the process of implementing an even greater concentration”, said Minister Tagcilar.

He has already said that in terms of public services, this report recognises the progress made by Kosovo, adding that there is an overall positive assessment in the report.

Deputy Finance Minister Fatmir Gashi has said on this table that Kosovo is in this respect before the states of the region.

“We need to further improve the budget impact assessment, with particular emphasis on its better budgetary-cycle synchronization, there is no law going to the Kosovo Assembly, which does not receive budget recognition, as much as it has impact on the budget. It is true that these environmental, social impacts are not included in that view, because the Ministry of Finance and the budget department only give the outlook on the financial share, while it has to work, it has to be adjusted for the Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of Labour and Social Goods to take care of the social and environmental impact of the law in other ministries. That means that the lack of inter-institutional co-operation which has a lot of room for improvement and you here show it many times”, he said.

Venera Hajrullahu, executive director at the Kosovar Civil Society Foundation, said Kosovo has accepted a lot of help from international partners in implementing reform in public administration.

In Kosovo, we don't really have to do it with reform, we have the opportunity to build public administration from the beginning, and we have the opportunity to build it properly and we have enough time and support. So what we have to say is that we haven't managed to have a civil service today, a public administration that's enough process in which the country is engaged”, Hajrullahu said.

Also present was Besnik Tahiri, the National Co-ordinator for State Reform from the Office of the Prime Minister, who has said that even after 20 years, Kosovo has failed to create a system of good governance.