The roundtable was moderated by economic expert Zef Preci, head of the Tirana-based Center for Economic Research, and 25 journalists and civil society activists took part.
The aim of the roundtable was to identify important issues or problems that civil society believes should be investigated in the public administration in Albania.
The findings will guide the main areas of BIRN Albania’s upcoming open call for three journalists to produce investigative articles on the public administration and its finances.
During the roundtable, the participants discussed the following themes and topics: public administration reform; local and central government procurement procedures; the efficacy of public private partnership contracts; employment in public companies and redundancies in the utility sectors; the recommendations and oversight of the public administration by the High State Auditing Office; the digitalization of services and the number of employees in the public administration; conflicts of interests and lack of internal democracy in academia and public universities; the lack of digitalization of universities; and procurement standards for school buildings, among others.
This activity was organized as part of the project Using Big Data and Multimedia to Boost Quality and Independent Journalism in Albania, financed by the European Union and implemented by BIRN Albania.