Both an ambitious European integration agenda and the need for Montenegro to develop national policies for a more competitive economy require a functioning policy co-ordination, a planning system with clear requirements, and proper institutional arrangements and functional capacities at the...

This paper sets out a strategy calling for a radical overhaul of the manner in which both the EU and aspiring member states define and implement what the Copenhagen criteria refer to as the “Rule of Law” in pursuit of the elusive goal of sustainability. While pointing to the limits of the...

This report examines the professionalisation of the civil service in seven Western Balkan states: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia1, Kosovo, Montenegro and Serbia. In the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the civil service is analysed separately...

The aim of this paper is to explore the most problematic aspects of information access legal regimes and to provide some guidelines to policy makers, including legislators, governments and public administrators. The analysis is based on the comparison of Freedom of Information Acts (FOIAs) and...

Kosovo is facing crucial challenges in developing a competitive economy, providing a decent level of public service and moving closer to the EU. Developing national policies to meet these objectives will require a functional policy co-ordination, planning and development system. This review is...

This study provides a comparative analysis of existing centralised purchasing institutions in selected EU Member States in terms of organisation, coverage, objectives and rationale, financing models, types of framework agreements and call-off systems, as well as the information technology used,...

The management of operational risk is at the heart of efficient government, but countries often fail to apply good or even routine operational risk management practices and have difficulty in understanding how to put the processes in place. Through an analysis of Turkey’s Undersecretariat of...

How do Member States regulate their national public procurement systems below the EU thresholds and in areas not regulated in detail by the EU Directives? This paper provides the reader with an overview of different national policies, rules and procedures and presents common features and...

The main purpose of the paper is to provide orientations based on a comparative approach to policy makers on drafting legislation on the organisation and functioning of the state administration. It is therefore written in a practice oriented way, although it nevertheless attempts to draw some...

The SIGMA Paper is drawn from a report on relations between Supreme Audit Institutions and parliamentary committees, prepared for the network of Presidents of the Supreme Audit Institutions of Central and Eastern Countries, Cyprus, Malta and the European Court of Auditors, as part of their...