National Assembly Capacity-Building (MK0139)

Strengthening the Assembly’s service so that the assembly can meet the increased responsibilities by filling vacant job positions and officials’ training
Start and end date of the commitment: January 2019 – December 2021
Lead implementing agency
Assembly of RM
Description of commitment
Status quo or problem addressed by the commitment
Vacant job positions, insufficiently trained officers, systematization as a legal obstacle, the need to reorganize the work units.
Main objective
Independent, professional and efficient assembly service and assessed officials.
Brief description of the commitment
Preparation of new acts for internal organization and systematization of jobs, in compliance with the conducted Functional review and adoption of an Annual plan for generic and specialized training of civil servants.
OGP challenge addressed by the commitment
- Increasing public integrity - Increasing corporate accountability
Additional information
Reference to objective 16 "Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions" Target 16.6: Develop effective, accountable and transparent institutions at all levels. This commitment is important for improving the public responsibility of the Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia by improving the rules and mechanisms that will ensure greater accountability of the employees for the undertaken responsibilities.
Milestone
1.1.1 Preparation of new acts for internal organization and job classification in accordance with the conducted Functional review
1.1.2 Addoption of annual plan for generic and specialized trainings of civil servants
Contact information
Name of responsible person from implementing agency
Cvetanka Ivanova
Title, Department
Secretary General of the Assembly
Phone and e-mail
02/3112-255, [email protected]

Open Parliament I: Accountability

1.1. Strengthening the Assembly’s service so that the assembly can meet the increased responsibilities by filling vacant job positions and officials’ training

Language of the commitment as it appears in the action plan: [100]

“Preparation of new acts for internal organization and systematization of jobs, in compliance with the conducted Functional review and adoption of an Annual plan for generic and specialized training of civil servants.”

Milestones:

1.1.1 Preparation of new acts for internal organization and job classification in accordance with the conducted Functional review

1.1.2 Adoption of annual plan for generic and specialized trainings of civil servants

Start Date: January 2019

End Date: December 2021

Context and Objectives

According to the action plan, the Assembly of North Macedonia has numerous unfilled job vacancies and insufficiently trained civil servants. This has created a need to systematize the internal organization of job positions and review the way civil servants are trained. To address these issues, this commitment calls for the preparation of new acts for internal organization and job classification in accordance with the conducted functional review. It also calls for the adoption of an annual plan for training civil servants.

According to the National Democratic Institute, the systematization of job positions will help ensure that the Assembly’s annual plan and staff training are developed in a way that addresses the current needs of its staff. Also, the annual plan aims to further support the Assembly’s independence in terms of managing and building its capacities. [101]

As written, this commitment is not directly relevant to the three OGP values of access to information, civic participation, and public accountability. The new acts appear to be designed to be used internally within the government without disclosing government-held information to the public. Similarly, the annual plan for training civil servants appears to be designed for internal government use to improve the training of civil servants. While the planned activities are verifiable, they lack key details or performance indicators. For example, it is unclear how the new acts will be used to fill job vacancies for the Assembly, or how the annual plan for training will be used to improve the performance of civil servants. Given the lack of detail on how the Assembly plans to use these activities to improve the services it provides, it is difficult to assess their potential impact beyond minor.

Next steps

The IRM recommends improving the design of future Assembly commitments by specifying the concrete steps to be carried out and the intended results from implementation. More specifically, future commitments should either improve public access to information, open up possibilities for citizens to participate in decision making, or create mechanisms for the public to hold government accountable for its actions.

[100] The texts for all the commitments are an abridged version of the commitment texts. For the full commitment texts, see the Republic of North Macedonia 2018-2020 National Action Plan, https://www.opengovpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Macedonia_Action-Plan_2018-2020_EN.pdf

[101] Aleksandra Cvetkovska, National Democratic Institute, email correspondence with IRM, 21 January 2020.

Commitment 1.1 Filling vacant job positions and officials’ training in the Assembly

Substantial:

The Assembly established a working group for preparing the new acts for internal organization and job classification, [128] which are in the process of being adopted at the time of writing this report. [129] The Assembly, in cooperation with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Westminster Foundation, also prepared a functional analysis of the Assembly Service to understand the readiness of this institution to incorporate changes in the medium and long term. [130] The Law on the Assembly Service was amended to achieve administrative independence of the service [131] and the risk management strategy of the Assembly for 2018-2020 was adopted.

The annual training plan is a legal obligation and is part of the overall process for training civil servants of MISA and the Agency for Administration. [132] In addition, the Parliamentary Institute has a specific plan for trainings which addresses the needs of the Assembly. MISA lacks capacity to implement the trainings planned but the Assembly supports its employees when they request to attend specific trainings of interest. [133] The Assembly Service lacked specific trainings, but with the new systematization, additional employments are planned and the department that deals with human resources has been restructured. [134] In addition, efforts are needed to follow development of the employees post-training, and to provide opportunities for technical personnel (for whom access to a computer is not required as part of the job specification) to access trainings, because having access to computer equipment is a pre-requisite for attending many of the trainings offered. [135]