Handjiska -Trendafilova: Activities behind us and those in front of us prove the devotion of RePA team to invigorate regional cooperation that fosters public administration reforms in the Western Balkans
ReSPA held 53rd Governing Board Meeting at the Senior Official Level.
“Today’s dynamic and efficient meeting took stock of ReSPA’s activities performed over the last three, extremely intense months. It also showcased that the ReSPA team will continue on the same track and energy to move forward with regional cooperation and continue to showcase tangible results. The guidance and commitment of our Board are instrumental for our ambitious joint work ahead" said Maja Handjiska-Trendafilova, ReSPA Director.
Over the last three months, ReSPA implemented 21 activities that strengthened the capacities of approximately 400 Western Balkans civil servants (with around 1500 participant days) within the various areas of quality management, EU Accession Negotiations, better administrative capacities for the use of pre-accession assistance, RIA implementation and administrative simplification, HRMIS and competency-based frameworks, etc.
Regional Quality Management Centre (RQMC) also performed numerous activities such as workshops on CAF implementation in MISA (where CAF implementation is now at the final stage of approving the Improvement Action Plan), starting the second round of CAF implementation in the Civil Service Agency RS BiH, Training of CAF Facilitators and external CAF evaluators, starting the procedure of the External CAF evaluation (PEF Certification) for issuing CAF Effective User Label in the Service Agency of Federation of BiH (BiH).
The second round of the Public Administration Award with the title “A Leap to Better Citizens’ Lives in the Western Balkans” launched in April, sparked great regional interest and generated double the applications as in the first round.
In May 2022 ReSPA Secretariat received several new applications for an In-country support mechanism. As part of this mechanism, as an illustration, ReSPA supported the development of the new Passport of Indicators for monitoring the Cross-Cutting Public Administration Reform Strategy for the period 2021-2022 in Albania and the evaluation of the current Strategy and the Action Plan for the development of a new PAR Strategy in North Macedonia.
ReSPA Director presented to the GB SL Members some of the upcoming activities, highlighting the preparatory work toward the new grant from EC and the Western Balkans High-Level Ministerial Conference on PAR which will be organized in partnership with OECD/SIGMA in Skopje, North Macedonia, on 15 September 2022, and the Public Administration Awards 2022 Ceremony to be organized as a part of the HL Ministerial Conference on PAR.
