BIRN Serbia: Good Governance Campaign Launched

BIRN Serbia in cooperation with the public relations and advertising agency Executive Group on December 1 start implementation of a public campaign promoting good governance in 25 municipalities of south and southwest Serbia.

The consortium won the UNOPS/PROGRES programme tender, published in August.

Recognizing the need to develop participatory, accountable and transparent governance and respect for human rights, BIRN and Executive Group have designed a campaign to promote and raise awareness of the core principles of good governance, motivate civic participation in decision-making, increase understanding of the roles and competences of local government and advocate utilization of good governance mechanisms that are applicable in the targeted municipalities.

The concept of good governance is one of the crucial crosscutting elements contributing to the PROGRES Programme overall’s goal of enhancing stability and socio-economic development in south and southwest Serbia.

PROGRES, a municipal partnership programme, is a joint action of the EU and the Swiss and Serbian governments. It is designed to enhance the stability and socio-economic development in south and southwest Serbia. The programme is implemented by UN Office for Project Services, UNOPS.    

The key principles of good governance – accountability, transparency, participation, efficiency, non-discrimination – should be introduced in the work of local self-government supported by other stakeholders such as businesses, media and civil society and be recognized by general population.

The campaign will promote five principles of good governance and their importance for local socio-economic development through a custom-made set of tools.

These include wide dissemination of promotional materials such as leaflets and brochures, a media campaign (using traditional and online media), and public events along with advocacy efforts and support for citizens’ participation drives.

The campaign will also appreciate the multi-ethnic setting of south and southwest Serbia.  

BIRN Serbia and Executive group decided to combine their expertise – Executive in the field of strategic communication and BIRN in media development and civic activism –  to jointly contribute to programme’s success. 

Serbian ministries spent millions for the media services

Serbian ministries spent more than half million euros in 2010 on media promotions that appear to violate the law, reveals Birn Serbia’s web portal “Make your own budget” (Skockajte budzet).

Total 500,000 euros of public funds were spent last year on advertising, TV broadcasting and using services of news agencies under the term of “services under contract” and “specialised services”, financial reports that BIRN Serbia has collected from all 18 ministries show.

These include calling on people to take part in elections or referendums, measures to be taken in case of a general emergency, humanitarian campaigns, public tenders and certain economic activities.

The adverts appear to violate the terms of Serbia’s Law on Advertising, which says ministries may not promote party political interests but may only advertise activities and measures that meet certain criteria to do with the public good.

One of the most questionable advertising campaigns in 2010 was by the Ministry of Environment and Spatial Planning.

It spent over 200,000 euro on matters qualified as “co-production services and television programming in the campaign ‘Clean up Serbia'”.

The ministerial report does not specify which media outlets received this cash. Nor has anyone seen the TV advertising campaign referred to, nor does it exist on the ministry’s website.

Other campaigns include one by Health Ministry, while Ministry of Human and Minority Rights spent over 60,000 euro on promotions in local media.

Only four of the 18 ministries did not spend any money on media services within “services under the contract” or on “specialised services”: the finance, agriculture, infrastructure and interior ministries.

These data are part of the bigger research BIRN Serbia conducted, looking into spending of budget money of all ministries in 2010 year under the term of “services under contract” and “specialised services”, which are considered to be the least transparent budgetary lines. 

This research is based on the data collected by application of Free Access to Public Information Law on whit in what our web portal had insight into Ministries’ official documents. Full report on the research results will be published in the coming weeks. 

Fifth training session on the control of public finances: Interpreting financial statements

Last weekend saw BIRN Serbia organise its fifth successive training session for journalists, covering monitoring and control of public finances, at Arandjelovac’s Hotel Izvor. This training is part of the multi-year “Eye on public finance” programme, which BIRN Serbia is implementing in conjunction with expert organisation Pro Concept and the support of the British Embassy in Belgrade.

The first day saw journalists who participated in the training given the opportunity to gain insight into a case study covering the financial statements of Milo Djuraskovic, which were presented to participants during a four-hour presentation by Miroslava Milenovic, a court expert in forensic accounting.

Miroslava informed journalists about the way to examine financial statements that are public documents, in order to efficiently and quickly draw conclusions and access information that they need to uncover the numerous irregularities of the financial implementation of projects and irregularities in the operations of certain companies, in this case the Nibens group.

“In Serbia at present financial crime and tax evasion are dominant, but also corruption within financial crime. The recent “Nibens” scandal is one of the best indicators of how money is pumped through rigged tenders and irregular procurement,” said Milenovic.

She explained to journalists how to interpret the structure of financial statements and how to spot key indicators of money laundering, as well as how they should seek the causes of such corruption in the period prior to the privatisation of public enterprises in Serbia before the year 2000.

BIRN Serbia representative Slobodan Georgiev spoke to the gathered journalists about what can be learnt from the financial statements of the Nibens Group and public company ’Putevi Srbije’ (Roads of Serbia) and how that information can be used to research an article.

“Data that serves journalists to investigate something like, for instance, the ’road – asphalt’ mafia, is publicly available, but it must not only be read carefully, but also read in the right way. These are things that one learns and everyone who deals with investigative journalism must know how to identify this date and the ways that such data can be used.”

Ruzica Stojmenovic, an expert of the Business Registers Agency, presented the agency’s database and explained the models used to control the quality of revisions and to read the notes for revision reports that explain how a report was made and what information it is possible to use when writing a news item.

She explained how to interpret inflows and outflows of business activity, investment and financial activities and actions that serve to show the inflow and outflow of funds from a company, but also how to recognise the importance of “cash-flow”.

“Cash flow is the sum of net results, calculated depreciation and long-term reserves. This means that the net is the result of new value created after all expenses have been covered. These are costs that do not include cash outflows and that is the company’s cash. This money ensures the security of a company. “

Stojmenovic explained to training participants the types of financial statements, the deadlines for their submission, who compiles them and who are the individuals responsible for maintaining these documents.

Explaining to journalists how they can access data on entrepreneurs and companies that are not required to submit reports to the Business Registers Agency, she said that one useful address could be the Tax Office and the Statistical Office.

“At the agency we talk about those whose reports we have, while the Statistical Office combines the data from the Tax Administration and the Agency for Business Registers, so they have a more-or-less clearer picture than us and if you cannot find some of the reports at our agency you can search for them at these addresses,” said Stojmenovic, who utilised part of the training session to clarify the financial terms used in reports.

Following discussions with agencies’ representatives, training participants were able to pose questions to representatives of the Public Procurement Office, including director Predrag Jovanovic and his assistants Danijela Bokan and Daliborka Sreckov.

Danijela Bokan presented the new portal of the Public Procurement Office, explaining the model used to create it and search methods for concluded public procurement contracts and annual reports on public procurement.

“Every client shall submit a report for the previous quarter and the deadline is the tenth day of the next month. Everything that has been implemented and all contracts that have been concluded must be submitted. This is important in order to know when you can get what information,” said Bokan, introducing the system for the submission of public procurement reports.

She noted that around 3,500 clients regularly submit their reports, while 12,000 clients do not do so, despite being legally obliged to deliver their reports. According to her estimate, there are 120,000 clients in Serbia.

As she hgihlighted, reports are published on the portal of the Public Procurement Office with a delay of one annual quarter, as the Office is unable to more quickly process all data.

President of the Public Procurement Office, Predrag Jovanovic, spoke about the agency’s plans for the coming period and explained that an initiative had been submitted calling for the Office to submit reports on implemented activities and procurement plans for the year ahead, as well as clearly defining what are public procurements and what are not during the preparation of the annual procurement plan.

He noted that interest exists to abolish the Public Procurement Office and that the ultimate result of this would be the centralisation of public procurement, which he believes would not be the best solution.

Following presentations, representatives of the Public Procurement Office answered questions posed by journalists, who expressed their own satisfaction with the training when summarising their impressions of the knowledge gained.

 

Live from six cities!

BIRN Serbia staged unprecedented simultaneous “Five cents for media” street actions in six Serbian towns on Saturday October 8, which was broadcast live on the internet via www.facebook.com/5parazamedije

The event took place in Novi Pazar, Uzice, Kragujevac, Novi Sad, Nis and Vranje and included the participation of hundreds of citizens who discussed their views on local media and the topics they believe to be important for the communities they live in.

In terms of coordination and production, this is the biggest event organised by BIRN Serbia’s office in collaboration with colleagues from the Belgrade office, local coordinators and local NGOs, and with the technical support of Telekom Serbia.

The action’s implementation included the direct participation of some 60 people – BIRN coordinators, local coordinators, technicians and volunteers. The event was also broadcast live over the Internet and watched by thousands of people, while the campaign’s Facebook group has grown to include nearly 1,500 members in just two weeks.

During the course of preparing the event, BIRN Serbia covered thousands of miles travelling across Serbia, spoke to dozens of people at the local level, made several thousand phone calls and sent hundreds of emails.

Video material collected during this campaign will be distributed to local media, while part of it will be included on the campaign’s Facebook page.

The citizens who participated in the “Five cents for media” event agreed on one thing: local media is important for local communities, but should deal more with citizen’s daily problems and spend less energy reporting on the activities of local leaders and national politicians.

BIRN Serbia is implementing this campaign with the assistance of IREX Serbia.

Birn Serbia: Take your place in an open studio!

BIRN Serbia is organising a “Five cents for Media” street event on Saturday 8th October to be held simultaneously in Kragujevac, Nis, Novi Sad, Vranje, Uzice and Novi Pazar!

In the period between noon and two p.m., anybody interested in participating will be able to enter the “Open studio” to share their ideas and express their views about local media; ask questions about issues they would like to know more about and suggest topics relevant to their local community.

The event will be broadcast live via Internet TV from all six towns, while an additional direct transmission link will be available on our Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/5parazamedije

Through this action we are seeking to improve communication between citizens and the media, thereby contributing to the creation of more high quality local media content.

The street event is part of a broader campaign that includes local media and civil society organisations and the Facebook page acts a platform for visitors to see photos, videos and news about activities taking place as part of the “Five cents for Media” campaign.

All interested citizens are hereby invited to participate in this action, take their place in an open studio and be reporters for a day!

Birn Serbia associates receive UNDP awards

Participants of a training programme for monitoring public finances were presented with awards by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for the best media articles regarding public finances.

UNDP awarded Aleksandar Radojevic and Vladimir Djordjevic for the best media article on monitoring public expenditure in Serbia. Both award recipients participated in a journalists’ training programme for monitoring public finances, which was organised by BIRN Serbia in 2010.

A series of texts entitled “Millions of control” was published via the web portal sumadijapress.rs, while journalists who participated in the training programme also authored several articles for the website skockajtebudzet.rs.

The works were judged by UNDP media issues representatives and prominent local journalists with experience of investigative reporting and reporting on transparency and public expenditure, both of whom were nominated by journalists’ associations UNS and NUNS.

In an attempt to focus on issues of transparency and public reporting on the spending of budgetary funds in Serbia and contribute to efforts aimed at combating corruption, UNDP organised a contest for research texts dealing with the monitoring of public expenditure in Serbia.

The contest was organised under the auspices of the UNDP project “Strengthening mechanisms of accountability in public finances”. This project’s aim is to support the establishment of effective and sustainable mechanisms for monitoring public finances.

Read the articles of journalists who attended the training programme for the monitoring of public finances via the following links:

Kragujevac millions out of control


A child on a business trip

Stray dogs last year “ate” 9.5 million dinars

Digging Deeper reprint and Serbian translation

BIRN’s investigative journalism guide “Digging Deeper”, written by Sheila Coronel, director of the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism and professor at Columbia University, New York, has been reprinted in English in response to high demand.

The book will be available for sale via BalkanInsight.com and through BIRN’s Belgrade office. If you require further information regarding the book’s availability, please contact [email protected].

The handbook reprint was made possible thanks to Erste Bank in Serbia.

The Serbian version of the book is currently being prepared. The handbook in Serbian, entitled “Iza kulisa”, is to be distributed to universities across Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina and Montenegro.

 

Lack of progress in Serbia

The Serbian people would probably enjoy better health and education systems if funds from the national budget were allocated more rationally, according to research carried out under the title “Analysis of the Appropriateness of Public Policy in Serbia”.

The research, carried out by ProConcept and the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, records a positive trend in the improvement of education and health services since 2000. However, this improvement is not sufficient for people to express satisfaction with the services.

The project’s authors concluded that complete modernisation and public sector reform could only be carried successfully if people were involved in planning and developing the system and if clear public policy objectives were determined.

When it comes to the health system, the research identifies progress in the field of preventive medicine and supply work with patients, says BIRN contributor Sasa Randjelovic.

According to him, patients and health care staff see the key problems as administration, long waiting times for specialist examinations and diagnoses, as well as insufficient time available for review.

Explaining that Serbia currently allocates 5.7 per cent of GDP to health care, Randjelovic adds that the state should change the funding of health care and the structure of employees in health institutions.

“The analysis shows that employees in the health system offer modest support for the reforms carried out and that more than half of respondents believe the state has the greatest benefit from health care reforms,” notes Randjelovic.

According to the research, the education system proved relatively ineffective at training to solve practical problems, networking and the application of knowledge to analyse and develop students’ motivation.

The results show that students’ parents and teachers agree that the biggest shortcoming of the education system is that youngsters are not taught how to apply their acquired knowledge in work processes.

The results’ presentation and following debate were also attended by Gordana Comic, vice president of the Serbian Parliament, as well as representatives of parliamentary committees and experts.

The aim of the research was to determine how funds from the state budget would lead to improved health and education services and whether people recognize the success of public policies in these sectors.

The survey was carried out for the second year running on a sample of 1,198 individuals in 15 towns and cities across Serbia. The survey is part of BIRN’s “Eye on Public Finances” project.

“Eye on Public Finances” is realised by ProConcept and BIRN Serbia, with the support of the British Embassy in Serbia. Ipsos, a strategic market research agency, participated in the creation of the sample by defining the questionnaire and statistical analysis.

BIRN at iFront conference

The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, assisted in the organization of the third iFront Internet conference at Belgrade’s Opera & Theatre Centre “Madlenijanum”, which was held on Thursday, June 9th.

The main topics of the IFront conference were web advertising and brand positioning on the internet, as well as how to carry out a successful start-up project.

As in previous years, guests again included professionals from some of the world’s largest IT companies and this year iFront enabled them to hear the experiences and advice of successful people from the world of internet business.

Participating in the two panel discussions, the conference’s main guest was Google representative Daniel Clemens. Geruk Constantine, co-founder of LinkedIn, also represented his IT company and spoke on personal and marketing companies, the internet and the social networks it represents. 

Representatives of the Business Angel Network of Serbia and Croatia also participated in panel discussion, offering presentations of several ways of financing start-up projects.

Companies Ringier Axel Springer and B92 also had their representatives, who addressed web marketing and web consulting. B92 web portal director, Vladimir Novakovic, addressed the issue of building a brand on the Internet under specific domestic market conditions, as well as how to use social media, blogs and other online formats to carry out promotions.

On the other hand, Jovan Protic, Blic online director, presented models of retail via the Internet, relying on relationships between the customer and the market in the digital media domain.

BIRN representatives were honoured as iFront conference delegates.

Usage of new technologies in public management

Internet presentations of local municipalities are still static, not allowing two-way communication with citizens, which makes the room for civil participation in the decision making processes considerably limited, show results of the research carried out by BIRN Serbia and NALED in February and March 2011.

The research aimed at assessing efficiency of electronic communication between local self-government and citizens show that majority of local self-governments in Serbia recognize the value of new information technologies. Of 149 municipalities covered by the survey (without Kosovo and Metohija and the City of Belgrade), 140 of them have their own official internet pages.

The usage of Internet services in practice, however, is not satisfactory, the results show. None of the municipalities have forums, discussion groups, or similar web applications which allow direct communication between citizens and public management officials, nor there is any multi-media content.

In the course of the research, special attention was dedicated to the existence of e-government, and according to research results, of 149 municipalities, only half has introduced this service (in one of the municipalities the service was under construction).

The existence of such service would allow easier and faster issuing of official documents for citizens, while making the work of local self-government much easier.

Results of the research also show that public officials in half of the municipalities do not reply to queries sent by e-mail or online contact forms, and that those who respond do it within one to three days, by submitting a complete information and full response.

Research results were publicly presented for the first time at the conference “Electronic Communication and Use of Electronic Document in Public Management” held on May 16 in the Aero Club in Belgrade.

The discussion, along with NALED and BIRN Serbia representatives, included representatives of public management and private companies: Nebojsa Vasiljevic, assistant to the minister of culture, information and information society, Zvonko Obradovic, director of Agency for Business Registry, Mico Basara, executive director of ComTrade, and Marko Mandic, representative of Asseco.

 You can find more information on the conference here http://www.naled-serbia.org/index.php?action=shownews&vestID=321

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