the basis for an easier connection of planning systems and policy coordination across government levels. Overall, to policy development was the introduction of the public policy concept and the methodology for evidence based policy development to a wider group of civil servants. The practice of ad hoc legislative drafting leads to low implementation rates of laws and by-laws, high costs to the government caused by numerous revisions of legislation and most importantly it leads to lower quality public policies, which directly affect the quality of life of BiH citizens. For the first time, ministries engaged their stakeholders in the early stages of policy development and included them in the assessment and selection of policy options. Policy development in line with OECD and EU standards as advocated by the SPPD Programme is far from an established practice, but it is the first step in the direction of high quality public policies and better harmonization of domestic legislation with the EU acquis. The Programme supported partner institutions in developing 19 policy papers. Out of those 11 policy papers fulfill the standards set out by the OECD/EU methodology (sometimes referred to as Regulatory Impact Assessment) and 4 of those analyses served as preparatory work for legislative drafting. The others improved, compared to previous practice, but they still complied only partially with the methodology. Workshops organized by SPPD were usually held in a sector setting, therefore technical staff and assistant ministers from within one sector met frequently to learn but also to discuss their problems and potential solutions. This led to improved communication within the sector.
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