Transparency of Monitoring Public Initiatives (RS0057)

Brief description of the Commitment

By implementing this commitment, an Overview of submitted initiatives from citizens and businesses for the amendment of ineffective regulations, ineffective administrative procedures or the creation/amendment of public policy documents will be established, made publicly available and periodically updated, which will contain the information on:  the subject and essence of the initiative (summary of the initiative),  the regulation, administrative procedure or public policy document to which the initiative refers,  the status of the initiative, and  the response/action of the competent authority in relation to the submitted initiative (summary of the actions of the competent authority). An additional step in the direction of raising the level of transparency in this segment will include the publication of the said Overview in a machine- readable format, on the Open Data Portal.

Problem Definition

1. What problem does the commitment aim to address? The Law on the Planning System of the Republic of Serbia ("Official Gazette of the RS", No. 30/2018), Article 30, stipulates that "an initiative to amend, prepare and adopt public policy documents may also be submitted to an authorised proposer by public authorities and organisations, local government authorities and organisations, and citizens, business entities, civic associations and other CSOs, science, research and other organisations in respect of which the public policy is implemented." In addition, the provisions of the aforementioned article provide that the said initiatives can be submitted to the competent public administration body "through the public administration body in charge of public policy coordination, which shall process the initiative and forward it to a competent public administration body for further action". On the other hand, Article 4 of the Law on the Register of Administrative Procedures ("Official Gazette of the RS", No. 44/2021) stipulates that the Register in question "is established and managed by the public administration body responsible for performing professional tasks related to the implementation of regulatory reform and the analysis of the effects of regulations", and that managing the Register, among other things, also includes "collecting and processing initiatives for amending ineffective regulations governing the procedures entered into the Register, with the aim of simplifying such procedures". Finally, Article 38 of the Law on Ministries ("Official Gazette of the RS", No. 128/2020, 116/22) stipulates that PPS, among other things, collects and processes the aforementioned initiatives. Although an electronic form for submitting initiatives, as well as an overview of initiatives that have been submitted, has been established on the PPS website at the following link https://rsjp.gov.rs/cir/izmena-neefikasnih-propisa/, practice has shown that there is public interest to make more information about the submitted initiatives publicly available, especially in the part related to the subject of the initiative and the actions of the competent authority, which are currently not available within the scope of the overview.

2. What are the causes of the problem? Bearing in mind that the possibility to submit initiatives by citizens and businesses is a relatively new mechanism, introduced in the last few years at the time of establishing the overview of submitted initiatives, it was not possible to foresee all the information that could be of interest to the public in this domain. However, the evident increase in public interest concerning the insight into initiatives from citizens and businesses submitted to PPS led to the need to make information about the initiatives in question available to all target groups and stakeholders in a larger volume compared to the overview that was initially created.

Commitment Description

1. What has been done so far to solve the problem? As pointed out in the description of the problem, in accordance with the stated legal basis, PPS has established an electronic form on its website, at the following link https://rsjp.gov.rs/cir/izmena-neefikasnih-propisa/, through which all stakeholders can submit three types of initiatives – for the amendment/drafting of a public policy document, for the amendment of ineffective regulations, as well as for the amendment of ineffective administrative procedures. Also, at the same place, an overview of submitted initiatives has been established, which contains the following information: the code of the initiative, the name and code of the administrative procedure to which the initiative refers, the regulation that is being amended and the status of the initiative. In this way, the public was given insight into the initiatives submitted and processed by PPS, which, based on the expressed interest, should be improved by publishing additional information.

2. What solution are you proposing? In order to make more information publicly available, as part of the implementation of the commitment, an overview of submitted initiatives will be established in the form of a report/table with more detailed information on all submitted initiatives, which will contain information on:  the subject and essence of the initiative (summary of the initiative),  ineffective regulation, ineffective administrative procedure or public policy document to which the initiative refers,  the status of the initiative, and  the response/action of the competent authority in relation to the submitted initiative (summary of the actions of the competent authority). The overview created will be published on the PPS website, in the section related to initiatives from citizens and businesses, at https://rsjp.gov.rs/cir/inicijative-privrede-i-gradjana/, and will be regularly updated, in accordance with changes in relation to already existing initiatives or due to the submission of new ones. An additional step in the direction of raising the level of transparency in this segment will include the publication of the said Overview in a machine-readable format, on the Open Data Portal.

3. What results do we want to achieve by implementing this commitment? By implementing this commitment, the aim is to improve the transparency of the monitoring of submitted initiatives from citizens and businesses, especially in the part that is of particular interest to the public, which concerns the subject of the initiative itself and the actions of the competent authorities. In addition to the fact that a larger volume of information will be made available to the public, the new overview, with more detailed information, will prevent the submission of multiple initiatives on the same topic and will enable stakeholders to be informed about the positions of the competent authorities on certain issues which may be of importance to them.

Commitment Analysis

1. How will the commitment promote transparency? By implementing this commitment, a larger volume of information related to initiatives from citizens and businesses submitted to PPS shall be made publicly available, especially in the part which concerns the subject of the initiative and the actions of competent authorities, which are of particular interest to the public. In this way, the transparency of the administration's actions in this segment of work shall be directly increased.

2. How will the commitment help foster accountability? The fact that information on the actions of the competent authorities on the submitted initiatives will be publicly available will indirectly affect the level of their accountability.

3. How will the commitment improve citizen participation in defining, implementing, and monitoring solutions? N/A

Commitment Planning (Milestones | Expected Outputs | Expected Completion Date)

1. Establishing an overview of submitted initiatives from citizens and businesses with information that is of particular interest to the public, which are listed in the description of the commitment | An overview of submitted initiatives from citizens and businesses with information that is of particular interest to the public, which are listed in the description of the commitment, is available on the PPS website (https://rsjp.gov.rs /cir/izmena- neefikasnih-propisa/) and is periodically updated | IV quarter of 2024

2. Publication of an overview of submitted initiatives from citizens and businesses with information that is of particular interest to the public, which are listed in the description of the commitment, on the Open Data Portal (https://data.gov.rs/sr/ ) | An overview of submitted initiatives from citizens and businesses with information that is of particular interest to the public, which are listed in the description of the commitment, is available at the Open Data Portal (https://data.gov.rs /sr/) and is periodically updated | II quarter of 2025