ministers to review and adopt strategic plans. However, some progress was achieved recently as the State and FBiH Ministers of Transport and Communication officially adopted their ministry strategic plans. Although all participating ministries from RS have their strategic plans finalized, there has not been official adoption by any of Ministers. The main challenge for civil servants was identification, collection and analysis of good indicators for monitoring and evaluation. The absorption capacity of ministries is limited and at times it is already taken up by regular activities which leaves little to no time for monitoring (monitoring still has low priority status). Most civil servants have not been familiar with good monitoring and evaluation systems, especially in relation to the
Many stakeholders recognise that strategic planning and policy development are key disciplines and prerequisites for the coming EU integration process. The current process of EU integration which will only intensify in the coming years demands an effective administration which is capable of handling the very large and complex task of approximating a country's systems and structures to that of the EU. Strategic planning will be among key tools in this process. However, only one third of State and Entity Governments have increased its capacities for strategic planning and this is still not a sufficient for greater impact.
4.3 Policy Development
4.3.1
Baseline
At the outset of the implementation of the SPPD Programme and as evident in the PAR Strategy6 and SIGMA7 reports on BiH, the concept of policy and the practice of policy development did not exist in the public administration institutions in BiH. Additionally, conceptually and linguistically the term policy was problematic in BiH. The SPPD Programme conducted the needs assessments in all participating ministries/sectors and they revealed that the overall capacity for policy development was limited and that the ministries did not conduct basic analyses prior to legislative drafting. Put differently, the ministries did not adequately assess whether or not the proposed legislation can be implemented. Policy development steps such as impact assessment were limited to explanatory remarks of the draft legislation and financial impacts which were based on the opinion given by the respective Ministry of Finance. Additionally, ministries did not conduct early consultations with stakeholders prior to legislative drafting and limited monitoring and evaluation mechanisms existed. Lastly, most counterparts claimed that ministries were understaffed even though their systematization rulebooks provided a possibility to hire additional staff. They claimed that this influenced their ability to produce quality policy documents. One positive aspect present in the public administration was a foundation upon which a policy development support can rest and those are legislative drafting rules adopted by 6 7
Please see http://parco.gov.ba/eng/?page=28 . Please see www.sigmaweb.org .
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