CAF is recognized as an important, tailor-made tool for better quality in public administration

At the opening section, Thomas Prorok, Deputy managing director of KDZ, expressed his great satisfaction with the broad attendance which clearly shows the CAF's recognition by the EU and WBs public institutions. He also proudly emphasized that the CAF is celebrating its 20th Anniversary and he reminded the attendees how the CAF story got started in 1998 when the ministers of the EUPAN designed general principles for improving the quality of services provided to citizens. During this period, CAF has begun the tailor-made tool for better quality in public administration and as such has been implemented in numerous European public institutions.  Today, the CAF2020 Model focuses on 6 new approaches such as digitalization, agility, innovation, sustainability, diversity and collaboration.

ReSPA as a CAF Resource Centre for the WBs administrations plays a crucial role in fostering PAR and the EU Integration

Mr Prorok also reflected upon the importance of the CAF in the Public Administration Reform in Western Balkans related also to the process of accession to EU. In that sense, ReSPA plays a crucial role as a CAF Resource Centre for the Western Balkans within its Regional Quality Management Centre (RQMC).

In one of the parallel sessions at the Conference, ReSPA has presented its CAF experience.  

As a strong CAF believer who has been awarded with the "CAF Effective user" Label, ReSPA will focus on the CAF practical implementation and its certification as a dominant QM tool within WBs public institutions. On that way, ReSPA will further support the WB region in the public services' improvements endeavour that has to be citizens and businesses oriented.

Goran Paštrović, ReSPA Expert, provided the overview of all the work done by ReSPA in the domain of quality managemnet since 2015 and recalled how the CAF has been introduced and implemented in ReSPA. He has also presented work done through CAF piloting, its benefits and shortcomings.

Olivera Damjanović, ReSPA Programme Manager emphasized that establishment of RQMC is the result of all previous ReSPA's activities as well as of work done and interest for quality management in all public administrations in the region. Since the quality management has been recognized as a cornerstone for effective and efficient public administration reform, ReSPA got strong support to establishment of the Centre.

The Centre will provide the support to the region by acting as the “national organizer” for CAF certification and will also establish, maintaining and support regional CAF and PEF networks, will organize training for trainers, accreditation for getting the PEF expertise and will conduct periodical regional analyses regarding the application of the total quality management tools.

Ljiljana Uzelac, Head of Strategic Planning Department Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government of Serbia as one of the ReSPA's champions in the CAF piloting, shared the Ministries experience with the CAF. Ms Uzelac emphasized that the Ministry recognized the CAF as a learning and self-growing process that can improve customer-oriented services,  overall performance, communications and underpin the creation of user centric culture in public administration. Ministry decided to connect CAF with the new 10-year PAR strategy and to roll out CAF in ten new institutions in the period of the next two years.

Ms Uzelac also emphasized the expectation from ReSPA to support the CAF implementation through regional peer-to-peer learning, sharing of best practices as well as educating the civil servants to become CAF practitioners and experts.