Bosnia and Herzegovina Design Report 2019-2021

Bosnia and Herzegovina’s complex institutional set up and political system has affected its engagement in OGP since 2014. This first action planAction plans are at the core of a government’s participation in OGP. They are the product of a co-creation process in which government and civil society jointly develop commitments to open governmen... was developed with civil society input and published in 2019. Commitments are related to ongoing projects rather than new initiatives, and include access to open dataBy opening up data and making it sharable and reusable, governments can enable informed debate, better decision making, and the development of innovative new services. Technical specifications: Polici..., public procurementTransparency in the procurement process can help combat corruption and waste that plagues a significant portion of public procurement budgets globally. Technical specifications: Commitments that aim t... More transparencyAccording to OGP’s Articles of Governance, transparency occurs when “government-held information (including on activities and decisions) is open, comprehensive, timely, freely available to the pub... More, public consultations and integrity plans in public institutions. Feedback on commitmentOGP commitments are promises for reform co-created by governments and civil society and submitted as part of an action plan. Commitments typically include a description of the problem, concrete action... proposals and greater collaboration between civil society and government in drafting commitments could improve the ambitionAccording to OGP’s Articles of Governance, OGP commitments should “stretch government practice beyond its current baseline with respect to key areas of open government.” Ambition captures the po... of the action plan.

The Open Government PartnershipThe Open Government Partnership (OGP) is a multi-stakeholder initiative focused on improving government transparency, ensuring opportunities for citizen participation in public matters, and strengthen... More (OGP) is a global partnership that brings together government reformers and civil society leaders to create action plans that make governments more inclusive, responsive, and accountable. The Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM)The Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM) is OGP’s accountability arm and the main means of tracking progress in participating countries. The IRM provides independent, evidence-based, and objective ... monitors all action plans to ensure governments follow through on commitments. Bosnia and Herzegovina joined OGP in 2014. Since, Bosnia and Herzegovina has not implemented any action plans. This report evaluates the design of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s first action plan.

General overview of action plan

The country’s complex, decentralized and asymmetrical political system and politically entrenched divisions on ethnic lines in a post-conflict situation make it difficult to find agreement amongst the different institutions, and has affected the co-creation processCollaboration between government, civil society and other stakeholders (e.g., citizens, academics, private sector) is at the heart of the OGP process. Participating governments must ensure that a dive... and ambition of the action plan. The plan includes many commitments that are relevant to OGP values. In the cases of some commitments, milestones are already in progress; while others build on wider government initiatives or plans, providing continuity – such as opening up datasets, streamlining integrity plans, and improving participation mechanisms with civil society.

The action plan development process stalled as the multistakeholder forum, created in 2016, was unable to properly function and take decisions. There were opportunities for civil society engagement at the start of the process and there was a short public consultation on the draft action plan. Most commitments in the final action plan are related to ongoing projects and larger initiatives of state-level institutions.

The action plan contains seven commitments. Particularly noteworthy commitments with moderate potential impact address public procurement transparency and involving civil society in improving participation in policy-making processes. Other commitments with minor potential impact address issues of open data, proactive transparency of BiH institutions, and for the first time, producing a budget for citizens. One commitment on streamlining the process of developing integrity plans is not relevant to OGP values.

Table 2. Noteworthy commitments

Recommendations

IRM recommendations aim to inform the development of the next action plan and guide implementation of the current action plan. Please refer to Section V: General Recommendations for more details on each of the below recommendations.

Table 3. Five KEY IRM Recommendations