ReSPA Programme Managers have presented a programme of work (PoW) within their thematic areas, giving a special emphasis on innovative and the most important activities.

Mr Dragan Đurić, ReSPA Programme Manager - Coordinator, presented ReSPA PoW within the first strategic objective: Coordination of PAR and PFM policies, National monitoring and reporting systems, and Quality of policy planning in Centre of Government institutions. He emphasized the ReSPA support to enhance regional cooperation in this area and better aligning legal drafting process with evidence-based policymaking process in ReSPA Members. He also explained ReSPA's mechanisms to support the mentioned objectives. The Study on Policy Coordination with its recommendations will be promoted and disseminated, while national experts will further develop national studies on policy coordination with specific recommendations for each country. They will be presented on ReSPA Open Days, and after that, ReSPA will establish Regional Network on Policy Coordinators as a sub-segment of the Centre of Government Working Group.

Mr Gentian Xhaxhiu, Programme Manager (Legal,) presented future activities under the Better Regulation (BR) thematic area by emphasizing the ReSPA's devotion to the regional improvement of the Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) and public consultation. Among the activities within the BR diversified through four pillars (WG meetings, development of the policy papers, study visits and networking through conferences), Mr Xhaxhiu underlined the importance of the upgrading the Regional Study on Better Regulations, which will provide updated recommendations. The work on this study will be kicked off in March and finalized in autumn this year.

Mr Xhaxhiu also guided the LOs through all phases of the In-Country support mechanism' application, aiming to ensure their understanding of this important mechanism for all ReSPA Members but also to enable them to promote the mechanism within institutions and to make the process as much smooth for the applicants.

Among activities within Human Resources Management and Development (HRMD) Ranka Bartula – Musikic, Programme Manager, special attention devoted to the Staf Satisfaction Survey which will be conducted jointly with SIGMA/OECD and will include all institutions within ReSPA Members.

Reports with the final result of the Survey will be prepared for each country and also each institution with high incidence in the response rate. These reports will contain recommendations for improvement and present the baseline for providing support in leadership development.

ReSPA shall also, in June this year, conduct its first Monitoring exercise and will assess Its activities. This exercise will refer to the indicators at the individual and institutional level, and through Report, those indicators will be presented at the Ministerial Conferences each year. In achieving the high response rate of the interviewees from the public institutions, ReSPA needs the strong support of the Liaison Officers. 

Ms Bartula-Musikic gave a short overview of activities performed under the monitoring so far. She guided LOs through the Intervention Logic, direct and induced outputs/indicators and a questionnaire as a core of the monitoring exercise.

ReSPA will pilot the Monitoring at the beginning of March and will fully implement it in June in order to prepare the first Monitoring Report for the Ministerial Conference smoothly and effectively.

Ms Olivera Damjanovic, ReSPA Programme Manager presented the ambitious PoW within Quality Management and e-Government areas. Establishing the Regional Quality Management Centre (RQMC) which will act as a Regional CAF Resource Centre, conducting the Regional analysis on reduction of costs of public service delivery, CAF piloting, hosting the regional repository of OGP and organising OGP regional conferences/workshops as well as drafting the eGov pilots, updating the Zero Open Data Guideline, developing Methodology for the assessment of the demand side regarding the opening data customized for the region, eGov Seasonal School and ReSPAthon are some of the planned activities.

As one of the most important novelties, Ms Damjanovic especially emphasized the importance of the RQMC which 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.

In the area of digitalization, the novelty will be the development of the analytical paper which will deal with a topic of which data is best to be open in sense of the impact on the users, while also the new one, ReSPAton competition, which will be organized as a beck to back event at the Ministerial Conference, will try to address the chosen regional issues in public service delivery in a digital way.

Other ‘’traditional’’ ReSPA’s activities such as Seasonal School, WG meetings, Conferences, etc. will be organized accordingly to the presented PoW.