Local self-government: administrative body or service centre?
21 July 2011, Dragana Bogdanović“One year is a short period of time for comprehensive changes, but one year is more than enough time to show dedication to substantial democratic reform”
M. Prokopijević
Having in mind that after twenty years in the business sector I found myself in the Municipal Administration, for me the most unpleasant surprise were the highly bureaucratic services and sluggish administration. To my good fortune, I immediately started working on the donor programmes, which demand interaction, constructive approach, expedience and readiness for continuous learning. Today, after ten years of work I have acquired numerous certificates at trainings, invaluable experience in project proposal preparation, as well as drafting and implementing development documents, and valuable contacts.
Based on this experience I feel that the biggest problem for local self-governments in Serbia is the lack of awareness of the essential importance of decentralisation and the change of the roles of municipalities from administrative bodies into community service development centres.
Decentralisation as a crucial condition for Serbian democratization was even ten years ago the democratic opposition’s programmatic goal, and since 2006 the Public Administration Reform Strategy targeted it as the first of four main principles underpinning reform.
There is no doubt that decentralisation is a notion that has been well known in Serbia, but mostly as a rhetorical device and much less as dedication of political structures to a realistic and ongoing process with the aim of achieving the highest level of democracy, that is, bringing authorities closer to people and bringing decision making down to the level closest to development needs.
I feel that activities on the horizontal and vertical levels in changing the role of administration towards a local community service development centre should focus on organisational, communication and human resources related issues, which are of highest importance and which is why I will use this opportunity to underline them.
On the HORIZONTAL LEVEL, or the level of municipal administrations, the following should be done, most effectively through a pilot project on inter-municipal/regional level:
- Human resource analysis performed of data on levels of education, trained resources, certificates acquired, trainings attended, additional skills and knowledge of the staff
- Together with continuous monitoring and reporting, stimulate staff based on relevant results and outcome indicators; unlike what is done at the moment – distributed regularly on a monthly level for regular attendance alone in a percentage that corresponds to differences in salaries – the higher the salary the higher the stimulation
- Based on relevant data base on work results and human resources it would be possible to design inter-municipal cooperation programmes around the exchange of knowledge, skills and experience
- Perform an analysis of the needs of local self-government services in the community together with regular periodic surveys of community stakeholders and clear and transparent channels of communication
- Perform an analysis of IT equipment in municipalities and the functional use of the equipment in operations – in our municipality we can say there is 1 computer on each employee, and since we started procuring the equipment ten years ago, the analysis of the use of this equipment in actually increasing efficiency or to see how many staff use the software operationally has never been performed
- Perform the analysis of the use of e-mail and web services by staff in performing their duties
- Perform a functional analysis of job classification – as the development concept of the local self-government unit can clearly be seen in its budget, the job classification also shows if the unit puts focus on management affairs or develops the activities of service development, which is one of the necessary preconditions for decentralisation.
VERTICAL LEVEL, or the Ministry for Public Administration and Local Self-government, which could be influenced through SCTM and donor programmes should:
- Unify data bases on human resources in the local public sector on the national level and design programmes of knowledge and experience exchange based on them
- Through legal regulations open the possibility for functional analysis of efficiency and effectiveness of the administration, to replace the current monitoring of municipal administration and reporting that come down to formally filling in dry questionnaires submitted regularly to the Ministry on semi-annual or annual basis
- Revise frameworks for job classification in municipal administrations that would be in functional correspondence with the municipal administration as service centre with clearly defined indicators
- It is also possible to give out annual awards in order to stimulate local self-governments to promote human resources and raise the level of municipal efficiency, based on clearly defined indicators, to the local self-government with most successful results or symbolically compensate successful staff – those who achieve results and promote their knowledge and skills.
Municipalities in South and West Serbia should not wait for “top-down” initiatives, as I am convinced that there is sufficient knowledge and will in our local self-governments to initiate effective changes and through international development programme support, joining forces together in sharing the same interest, mobilise all available resources to serve to improve the efficiency of municipal administration and the quality of life of the people. We need to understand that municipalities are companies appearing on the market and surviving only by building added values and improving competitiveness.
PROGRES Programme is within our reach with its Component 1 – Good Governance, which is why the question is not can we, but only will we change together and move forward?
Dragana Bogdanović
LED Office Associate, Department for Economy
and Social Activities, Ivanjica Municipality