First Regional Western Balkans Service Delivery Survey: Governments don’t ask citizens’ feedback on quality of public services
Only 43% of the general public in 6 Western Balkan countries thinks that dealing with their public administration has become easier, says one of the findings of a comprehensive survey conducted by the WeBER Project. The survey “Exploring public perceptions of Administrative services in the Western Balkans” is the first regional survey dedicated to service delivery, covering Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia.
Regarding red tape in public administration, 48% of citizens across the Western Balkans think that there have been effort or initiatives by their governments to simplify administrative procedures for citizens and businesses in the past two years. This view is held by the majority of citizens in Kosovo (57%) and Serbia (55%), but only by 28% in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“In general, survey data reveal large variations between individual countries across the Western Balkans in terms of citizens’ perceptions of various aspects of service delivery, but an acute challenge and one of the most surprising findings which arose from this survey is a blatant lack of mechanisms allowing citizens to give their opinion of the quality of the services they get from the state”, says Simonida Kacarska, Director at European Policy Institute (EPI).
Only around a third of citizens across the region confirm that their administration has asked for citizens’ feedback on how to improve administrative services in the past two years, ranging from 13% in Bosnia and Herzegovina to 44% in Albania. Moreover, one third of the region’s population agrees that, as users of administrative services, they have possibilities to give their feedback on the quality of services they receive – ranging from 15% in Bosnia and Herzegovina to 38% in Kosovo.
“Without feedback mechanisms, it is impossible for any government to know what citizens, as tax payers who finance these services, think about particular aspects of service delivery and which improvements are necessary. It seems as if the governments in the region didn’t care about the needs of their citizens, which may be an issue of poor capacities, but it can also be read as a lack of understanding of how important it is to build the trust in government through such mechanisms”, explains Kacarska.
The survey data also revealed a low level of public awareness of the availability of e-services across the region, ranging from as low as 19% in Bosnia and Herzegovina to as high as 53% in Macedonia.
“What is worrisome, is that data showed a gap between readiness to use e-services and actually obtaining the service requested”, explains Simonida Kacarska. Only 35% of respondents who are familiar with e-services in their countries claim they have managed to “always” obtain the service they requested online in the past two years. This proportion varies from 23% in Albania to 47% in Serbia.
Regarding inclusiveness of service delivery monitoring, only a quarter (26%) of citizens agree that citizens or civil society have been involved in the monitoring of services. The level of approval is the highest in Albania (35%) and the lowest in Bosnia and Herzegovina (11%).
“This survey is an extremely useful source of information for the governments in all 6 targeted countries. It very clearly pinpoints the neuralgic spots of public administrations across the region, and the need for the governments to step up their efforts in cutting red-tape to improve service delivery and further promote monitoring of service delivery by civil society and citizens”, concludes Simonida Kacarska.
About WeBER Project
Western Balkans Enabling Project for Civil Society Monitoring of Public Administration Reform – WeBER – is a three-year project funded by the European Union and co-financed by the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The overall goal of WeBER is to increase the relevance, participation and capacity of civil society organisations and media in the Western Balkans to advocate for and influence the design and implementation of public administration reform (PAR).
WeBER is implemented by the Think for Europe Network (TEN) composed of EU policy oriented think tanks in the Western Balkans, and coordinated by the European Policy Centre from Belgrade, with partnership support of the European Policy Centre (EPC) from Brussels.
Members of TEN are European Policy Centre (CEP) from Belgrade, European Policy Institute (EPI) from Skopje, Institute Alternative (IA) from Podgorica, Group for Legal and Political Studies (GLPS) from Pristina, Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI BH)from Sarajevo and Institute for Democracy and Mediation (IDM) from Tirana.
For more information, please visit http://par-monitor.org.
