About BACID III

The main objective of BACID III is to improve good public governance in the Western Balkans and the Republic of Moldova. BACID activities will focus on two elements of governance that are in urgent need to be further developed and are not sufficiently supported by other donors and actors:

Increasing the quality of public administration and public services with the Common Assessment Framework (CAF), which is hosted by the Ministries for Public Administrations of the EU-member countries and recognised from EU and OECD SIGMA.
Decentralisation and local autonomy as key elements of the “Western European Democracy Model” and guarantors for the provision of high-quality local services.

The BACID activities will be implemented together with two regional organisations. Both, Regional School of Public Administration (ReSPA) and Network of Associations of Local Authorities in South-East Europe (NALAS) have been established by their members – ReSPA by the Ministries for Public Administration in the Western Balkans and NALAS by the Local Government Associations of South East Europe, and have proven to be strong and trustworthy partners. ReSPA is located in Danilovgrad, Montenegro, NALAS has the headquarter in Skopje, North Macedonia. ReSPA and NALAS are partners and beneficiaries at the same time because BACID III will contribute to the institutional sustainability of the two organizations by consolidating the Regional Quality Management Centre (RQMC) of ReSPA as regional CAF centre on the one hand, and strengthening the technical capacities of NALAS both in its core areas (decentralization observatory and fiscal decentralization benchmark) and in developing capacities in digitalization to support the Southestern Europe local governments (SEE LGs) on the other hand.

BACID III builds on the Austrian Development Cooperation (ADC) co-financed BACID programme 2014-2021 (BACID I & II) by securing its achievements through the following activities:

The Regional Quality Management Centre of ReSPA provides excellent CAF services by setting up the CAF-Feedback and Certification System, establishing a Network of CAF-Feedback Actors, providing CAF-Feedback and awarding “Effective CAF User” labels in pilot organizations and linking the CAF-actors of the Region with the European CAF-Network (CAF Regional Network). Furthermore, CAF implementations will be carried out on all levels of governments with the support of digital CAF tools. Networking events will accompany the CAF activities for know-how exchange and awareness and a publication on the evaluation of the CAF programme within ReSPA will summarize the main outputs including recommendations for further developments.

The activity “NALAS Decentralization and Digitalisation” safeguards the NALAS-Observatory for Transparency and Decentralisation through fiscal decentralisation reports in SEE focusing on post covid19, fosters budget transparency through citizens budgeting, and integrates the regional and administrative decentralisation assessment. Furthermore, NALAS will be capacitated to support its members regarding smart digitalization, an analysis on the status quo of digitalization in local governments will be carried out to identify strengths, challenges, good practices, and frontrunners in the Region and two smart city digital pilots will be implemented with the North-Macedonian city of Veles on the improvement of elderly care and the Serbian city of Sombor on improving the urban park management system. Finally, NALAS will foster its role in EU-Affairs to advocating the interests and needs of its members regarding possible EU membership.

The main target groups are civil servants, leadership in public sector organisations from all levels of government and politicians (mainly from the local level) in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Kosovo° and Moldova. Through capacity development, CAF implementations, study visits, workshops, events and publications about 1000 people will directly benefit (direct beneficiaries) from the intervention. Around 9000 people will be reached indirectly including the indirect beneficiaries of the smart digital city pilots in Veles/North Macedonia and Sombor/Serbia. (° This designation is without prejudice to positions on status and is in line with UNSCR 1244 and the ICJ Opinion on the Kosovo declaration of independence.)

The lack of good governance, that can be observed in the Western Balkans and the Republic of Moldova at all levels of government, together with deficient intergovernmental relations impairs social and economic development and the quality of public services for its citizens. By contributing to improving good public governance the project will have impact on the overall socio-economic development of the partner countries. Hence, the project supports both to comply with the OECD-SIGMA principles of public administration for EU-membership in the Western Balkan countries and the Republic of Moldova and to implement the recently adopted SEE 2030 Strategy.