7-8 February 2024, Prishtina

The Conference brought together global experts, high-level decision-makers, academia, and essential business and civil society partners. The primary focus was discussing Administrative Burden Reduction (ABR) in the Western Balkans, particularly emphasizing the principles of service delivery and digitalization principles. It aimed to explore avenues that inspire reform agendas in the face of shared challenges.

Participants delved into various topics, including breaking silos in service delivery, Life-Events, measuring public perception and the success of reforms, simplification and digitalization strategies, key principles, and the main digital transformation building blocks behind ABR. The discussions also covered opportunities for enhanced interoperability for streamlining registration services and reducing the burden from revenue collection.

The Western Balkans are at different stages of service delivery reform, aiming to provide quality and easily accessible services to businesses and citizens. Administrative burden reduction is a critical aspect of this process, with various practices established by administrations related to strategies, institutions, tools, and multi-level coordination for administrative burden prevention and reduction.

ReSPA actively contributed to the overall goal of the conference by introducing the general philosophy behind the components of the Service Delivery and Digitalisation principle. The focus was particularly on the Citizen-Oriented Service Delivery subcomponent, where key initiatives realized in 2023 and planned for 2024 were discussed to support the digital transformation of the Western Balkans.

Bojana Bajić, ReSPA Project Officer on Digitalization, participated as a panellist in the session on "Key principles and main digital transformation building blocks behind ABR." She presented ReSPA's recent work in public reform, focusing on two essential aspects: the state of play regarding the Digital Transformation of Western Balkans economies and the use of emerging technologies in the region. Bajić also provided an overview of the progress made in the Western Balkans regarding key elements of digital infrastructure and highlighted the challenges faced by the region. The discussion included expectations for moving toward delivering end-to-end digital services and utilizing the “once and only” principle. Additionally, Bajić shared insights into good practices for using emerging technologies in the Western Balkans and their impact on the quality of the service delivery ecosystem.