LOCAL COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

Monitoring of Local Authorities

The project Monitoring of Local Authorities was carried out by Center for Free Elections and Democracy (CeSID) with the assistance and support of National Democratic Institute (NDI), Belgrade . The project was carried out in the period from December 1 st , 2001 to March 1 st , 2002 . CeSID's activists from CeSID's five local offices, that is, from the municipalities in which the project was carried out were involved in the project. Those are the municipalities of Valjevo, Zajecar, Nis , Novi Sad and Vracar (activities in Vracar were coordinated by CeSID's Belgrade office since this municipality is one of 16 municipalities that belong to the city of Belgrade ). In the course of the realization of the project CeSID's two activists in each municipality were engaged in conducting activities envisaged within the project. One of them was a legal expert and for the other person, previous knowledge was not compulsory. Apart from them, CeSID's coordinators from the offices in above-mentioned municipalities also took part in carrying out the project. CeSID's 50 volunteers participated in the processes of conducting public-opinion researches, and in the process of individual monitoring.

The data on activities that were performed in the pre-project and post-project phases are also presented in the report.

Preliminary activities

Within the pre-project activities we carried out several parallel actions.

The first of mutual activities was NDI's seminar held in Belgrade . All the experience with the work on projects related to the local community were passed to CeSID's activists by Nick Green and Chris Hoghman. That was the opportunity to lay down guidelines once more for the practical realization of the activities envisaged within this project. It was one-day seminar and CeSID's activists who later on worked on the project participated in the seminar.

Long series of activities date from the period from October 20 th to November 20 th 2001 . In the course of this period we visited all the municipalities in which the project was planned to be carried out. Two meetings were held in each municipality. The first meeting was organized with representatives of the local administration bodies and local authorities. We outlined the plans concerning our project at the meeting. At the same, we also had the opportunity to hear about problems that the local authority bodies were facing in their work. We got the support to carry out our project freely from the local authorities in each municipality. The second meeting was held at CeSID's offices and CeSID's volunteers and activists of other NGOs participated. The activities we planned to carry out were presented to the public at these meetings.

We received feedback on problems from those present at the meetings in the way they saw them, and also their opinion on the very project, that is, on the objectives it was aiming at.

As a third activity, a three-day seminar was held in Novi Sad (December 24-26, 2001) and two activists from each CeSID's office, a coordinator and an assistant took part in it. This seminar represented the final phase before conducting the first activities. The seminar aimed at training all CeSID's activists to be able to meet the needs of the project.

In the period from November 22 nd to November 29 th 2001 brochures and guides for municipalities were designed. The text in the brochures was general and related to the actions and rights citizens have before the local administration bodies. A unique form was designed for all municipalities. A guide through municipalities was designed for each municipality individually. The shape of each form was designed by the coordinator of the project and a legal expert from each team entered the data concerning his own municipality. In that way data were obtained on each single municipality. In guides one can obtain data on the arrangement of services, the rights citizens can exercise before them, their working hours, numbers of offices, telephones etc.

Project phase

Distribution of propaganda materials was conducted within the first two weeks of the project. This activity had a good echo in the public and citizens expressed interest and gratitude for the information they got. In the course of the project CeSID's activists noticed our propaganda material with citizens. That is a proof that it was not just throwaway material, but that citizens kept it and used it as a source of information.

The results of the public opinion research among citizens who use the services of the local administration were published in the second part of November. We informed representatives of the local administration about our aim to conduct a research. In the very process of polling five volunteers from each municipality were engaged in assisting CeSID's two-member team (25 volunteers from CeSID altogether).

The work on collecting general data related to municipalities was conducted in cooperation with the local administration bodies, bureaus of statistics of the municipalities in which the project was carried out. We took over the data from the municipal services in charge, on the number of employees, arrangements within departments, professional qualification, and municipal budget. We also took the data from the statistics bureaus on the population, and territory of municipalities and their divisions.

The process of individual monitoring, that is, the process of monitoring individual rights of citizens which they exercise before the local administration body ran constantly. Every week in the course of the first three months some other right was monitored. The monitoring of 12 rights that citizens exercise before the local administration bodies was conducted. Within this monitoring three things were monitored. The administration procedure, which meant monitoring legal aspects. They are related to the volume of necessary documentation, as well as to the very procedure that should be followed in order to achieve a right. Then a time distance which is related to a time period needed to achieve a right. It had two aspects. The time needed for achieving rights after obtaining all necessary documents, as well as the total time needed for all activities that are related to achieving a right. The third part represented a financial aspect related to the amount of money needed for achieving a right.

The means of obtaining the data on indicators of achieving an individual right had three parallel directions. Firstly, we obtained the necessary data through the contact with the local services that perform the rights that were under our monitoring. Then, CeSID's activists inquired about the same data with volunteers and other people willing to cooperate. Third and the most important source of information was CeSID's monitoring conducted by municipal teams. Municipal teams had the task to ask the citizens who came to achieve their right to cooperate and let the teams monitor the procedure of achieving their rights before the local administration bodies. After obtaining the citizens ‘consent we monitored the procedure from start to finish, of course, collecting all the parameters we needed.

It is interesting that the data obtained in the three above-mentioned methods were almost identical.

The work on questioning clerks of the local administration was conducted in the second part of February. We informed the local administration bodies about our aim to conduct a poll. In the course of this poll, according to the opinion of CeSID's field activists, clerks expressed fear and were unwilling to cooperate in the poll. It is also uncertain whether the data and attitudes they expressed in the polls were really the attitudes they had.

Post-project activities

We conducted the processing of the data from the public-opinion polls as well as from the process of the monitoring after we had obtained all the data from the field.

The public-opinion research was divided into two parts: polling the citizens and polling clerks of local administration. We used the data obtained through polling citizens in order to provide questions for clerks of local administration bodies and in that way to get the most authentic picture these two involved groups have about each other.

CeSID's legal experts worked on analyzing the data obtained through the monitoring. The processing of the data was conducted in cooperation with the coordinator of the project and with a great deal of feedback from his part.

On finishing all the activities related to the analysis of the findings, a public panel was held. Representatives of the local authorities and the local administration, local committees of political parties, other non-governmental organizations and citizens were invited at the panel. The coordinator of the project who presented the findings and the expert in the field of local self-government who also conducted the analyses of the obtained data and made suggestions for better functioning of the municipality participated in each panel. Members of CeSID's teams from the municipalities in which the public panels were held also took part. They introduced citizens to the characteristic details of their environment. After this introductory part some time was allocated to the participation of citizens and the local administration bodies. With that the initiative was created for the continuation of the talks between these two interested parts.