Strategic Policy Advice and Policy Coordination in Serbia

1
Strategic Policy Advice and Policy Coordination
in Serbia

• Marko Paunovic
• October 1st 2005

2
Organization of the Ministries

• Legal Framework
• Law on Ministries - Parliament
• Decree on Principles of Organization and of the
  Work Places The Government
• Decision on Organization of Work Places The
  Government
• Decree on principles

3
Organization of the Ministries

• Office of the Minister
• Maximum number of employees defined by the
  Government Decree
• Secretariat
• Sectors/departments/sections/groups
• Assistant and Deputy Ministers

4
Ministry Capacities

• Lack of coordination, cooperation and exchange of
  information within the ministry
• Sectors usually make their own working and
  operational plans
• Ministries are often complaining about the lack
  of strategic planning unit at the center of
  government
• Minister in Serbia can not rely to his employees
  in order to develop and implement optimal policy

5
Advice to the Cabinet

• General Secretariat not doing policy advising
• Secretariat for Legislation only doing legal
  review
• EU Integration Office
• Advisory bodies not very effective
• Council for EU Integration

6
Center of Government

• New regulations have separated political offices
  from General Secretariat
• The Advisory capacity has been displaced to these
  offices

7
General Secretariat and Secretariat for
Legislation

• No capacity to do strategic advising
• Preparation of acts for the governments decision
  whose purpose is supervision, directing and
  harmonizing of the activities of the ministries
• Secretariat for Legislation is only doing Legal
  Review
• Interesting this secretariat is in charge for
  drafting laws related to functioning of
  government public administration system
  organization and tasks of ministries, labor
  relations in government institutions

8
PM Office

• Besides Chief of staff, the Office is comprised
  of 5-7 advisers
• Mainly involved in the process of defining and
  coordinating policies related to the issues of
  the highest political importance,
• Advisors to the PM do not take part in the
  regular, daily work of the government, nor they
  take part in the preparation of the Government
  session
• Regarding their party affiliation, some of the
  advisors are nonpartisan, and some advisor are
  high ranking officials of the prime ministers
  party.
• Another possibility that the Law on Government
  gives to the PM is to create Council for Economic
  Development and Council for State Administration
  and Public Services, with up to 5 members.

9
DPM Office

• DPM is in charge for coordination of economic
  policies and EU integration process
• Besides the Chief of Staff and her Deputy, the
  Office is comprised of 4 advisers and several
  assistants
• 3 of the advisors are nonpartisan, and 1 advisor
  is a member of the DPMs party
• Three other institutions are also directly
  subordinated to the DPM
• Serbian Office for European Integration
• Serbian Investment and Export Promotion Agency
• Poverty Reduction Strategy Implementation Focal
  Point

10
EU Integration Office

• New Institution set up when this Government
  came to the office
• This Office will in the future have a very
  important role in strategic policy making.
• Even now, the Office was mostly seen by other
  institutions as a relatively professional team,
  whose opinion has to be considered.
• Also, during the preparation of new regulations,
  the Ministries have to ask this Office for an
  opinion related to harmonization with the acquis
• Most of the employees are young, with substantial
  international experience

11
PRSP IFP

• The PRS is a document that provides an analysis
  of poverty in Serbia, and the main strategic
  guidelines for social development
• The role of this team is to oversee and
  coordinate the implementation of the Strategy,
  and to monitor and report on the poverty rates in
  Serbia

12
International Organizations and conditionality

• IMF
• role of the IMF in strategic decision making and
  advising can not be underestimated
• World Bank
• mostly focused to advisory and technical
  assistance to the government
• move towards direct budget support
• EU

13
Think Tanks

• Relatively important role of the private
  institutions
• University and government think tanks mostly
  irrelevant
• Advocacy groups
• Chamber of Commerce
• Standing Conference of Towns and Municipalities

14
Conclusion

• One of the major challenges will be to improve
  the intellectual and expert capacities in order
  to ensure that the decisions are made based on
  the informed discussions for the people who know
  what the alternative are, ant what are the effect
  of those alternatives.
• That capacity does not exist in the state
  administration of Serbia as of this moment, at
  least not as institutionalized support system for
  the decision makers an the Government
• Decisions are frequently not based on proper
  discussion, and without taking all the relevant
  alternatives in consideration
• International Institutions were extremely useful