Our objectives are more efficient operations of the administration, higher inclusion of citizens in policy making processes, more open society and a fair and manageable work system, and to achieve those objectives we prepared 16 laws in the previous year which were adopted by the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia. Amendments to the Law on Local Self-Government Units (LSUs) ensured higher inclusion of citizens. Municipal and city administration will in the future have to conduct surveys during preparation of investment parts of local self-government budgets. Five percent of citizens eligible to vote in a local self-government unit will from now on be able to initiate civic initiatives by their signatures, while only 100 signatures will be sufficient for a LSU to initiate a public debate on a planned decision. These amendments also ensured more efficient operations of LSUs. The minimum deadline to convene a session of a municipal assembly or a city council is now 24 hours, the number of local officials has been reduced and the position of local communities has been improved. The Law formalized the possibility of inter-municipal cooperation and we expect that this would be used in launching of major projects which would address problems of citizens at the local level. We also directly supported local self-government units through the Community Fund, which is 32 times higher than in the previous year. In this manner, RSD 320 million was allocated for infrastructure works, development of eGovernment and local cultural and sports events. Through amendments to the Law on Civil Records and procurement of equipment worth more than RSD 30 million we established the Register of Civil Records, which ensures electronic exchange of data contained in these databases. Citizens will be able to, if they wish, to obtain certificates from civil records wherever they are in Serbia or abroad. Civil records of diplomatic missions and consular posts will constitute an integral part of the Register of Civil Records, in addition to civil records of all municipalities and cities/towns, which transferred more than 98% of data from the civil records until May 2018. At the same time, we are working with the Ministry of Internal Affairs on introduction of electronic records of Serbian nationals and transferring of the register of citizens in the Register of Civil Records. 279 LSUs, social centres, daycare centres, public authorities, university schools and advanced secondary schools are included in eZUP. Data for more than 256,000 requests have been exchanged through this information system, without requiring any document from citizens. Activities are being undertaken to include all municipal and city administrations as users of the system as soon as possible. We allocated RSD 48 million from the budget for introduction of one-stop-shops in LSUs, so that ten LSUs could introduce their “one-stop shops” in accordance with certain criteria and other necessary preconditions and respond to all challenges of good governance. For example, just to transfer the title to a car, citizens currently have to visit 8 officers in 4 public authorities, fill in 8 forms and pay 7 payment orders (a total of RSD 15,000) and all this takes 5 days. In Germany it is one desk, one paper and 20 euros. The Law on eGovernment has been passed, which is one of the pillars of development of the full and functional eGovernment. In practice, it will ensure equal acceptance of electronic and paper-based documents in all administrative procedures and judicial proceedings. Its use will ensure efficiency, reduce costs and create new values in almost all fields of life and work. In the previous year we made one of the key steps towards introduction of a single and integrated professional development system for all employees in public administration, namely, the Law on National Academy for Public Administration was passed. We expect a lot from the National Academy for improvement and strengthening of capacities of employees in public administration, particularly at the local level, bearing in mind that we modelled it on similar European institutions as a modern, functional and central institution of the professional development system in public administration of the Republic of Serbia. Amendments to the Law on Public Administration introduced compulsory public consultation at the earliest stages of passing of new laws, which includes the general public in the procedure of preparation of laws and strategic and other public policy documents. Another five laws were passed in the field of the salary system reform so that the state could better manage public finance, human resources, policies and services. Umbrella Law on Salary System for Public Sector Employees established a single methodology for evaluation and classification of all jobs in pay groups and pay grades according to a single coefficient matrix. Introduction of pay groups and pay grades and application of coefficients for jobs in public services will begin on 1 January 2019. The adopted Catalogue of Jobs for public services made an inventory of all jobs and grouped them in about 870 posts. The principle of equal salary for work of the same or similar complexity and the quality and knowledge as the main criteria for employment exclusively through competitions are important to us for every law. The most recent two adopted law relate to public agencies and salaries of their employees. We introduced mandatory public competitions for employment and testing of candidates’ knowledge, while directors and members of the board of directors can only be persons with minimum nine years (or five for the local level) of relevant work experience within an agency’s scope of competences. In addition, we limited the number and duration of terms, while officials of political parties cannot be appointed as directors. Any surplus income of the agency must be directed towards the development of the agency or returned to the budget, while salaries of employees in agencies are adjusted to the Law on Salary System for Public Sector Employees and salaries of other public sector employees. During the past year, we also worked on improvement of the position of national minorities through amendments to three laws in that field, as well as the Law on Civil Records. Entering data on nationality on a voluntary basis has been ensured, as well as more efficient and transparent work of national councils of national minorities. Spending of funds will be more transparent, while politicization of officials in national councils is reduced because they will not be allowed to be members of managing bodies of political parties or to work in authorities responsible for minority policies. After 15 years, we activated the Fund for National Minorities last year with a focus on provision of information in languages of national minorities. This year fund is 12 times higher and amounts to 21.8 million. We conducted the reform of inspectorates, which ensured improved working environment, evident in the first results. In 415 thousand inspections performed in 2017, only 3,000 unregistered businesses were found, which is as many as 10% less than in 2016. The focus was on preventative and advisory actions of inspectorates. We had more than 3,000 official advisory visits last year and we imposed 8,000 preventative measures! Businesses evaluated themselves on 650 occasions, while inspectors announced 25,000 inspections to businesses. We reduced extraordinary inspections to 30%, while 70% of inspections are performed regularly according to plans which are public and available to businesses. Procedures and practice have been standardized and made uniform, which ensured that businesses were visited averagely by one inspectorate on only one occasion last year. Improved organisation and communication of inspectors was achieved through the work of the Coordination Commission, the working groups of which also include representatives of all relevant business associations – NALED, CCIS, the Foreign Investors Council. Thus, the businesses together with inspectors adopted 18 plans for joint coordinated inspections according to the main areas of shadow economy, and also for goods and services with significant impact on the quality and citizens’ safety. In the following period, we will work on implementation of software platform eInspector, which will ensure better communication for inspectors and we would be able to control their work more efficiently. In the second half of October, four pilot inspectorates, namely Sanitary, Market, Labour and Administrative Inspectorates, will start using this software, while other inspectorates will join them in spring, after we test the system in these four inspectorates. From now on, businesses which committed a labour or trade offence would have an option to make a plea bargain and their penalties would be reduced. We achieved this by adopting guidelines at the CC, and such guidelines are also being prepared for other fields of inspection. An analysis of capacities of inspectorates is currently underway, which should be a basis for development of the Action Plan for employment of inspectors in the following three and a half years, as well as a new model for providing equipment and upgrading equipment of inspectorates. We continually work on advancement of inspectors and they will also attend training at the National Academy. We invested particular efforts to provide corrective coefficient for inspectors at the local level, which can increase salaries by as many as 20%. The Serbia-Korea Information Access Centre has been formed for free of charge trainings for civil servants and citizens in information and communication technologies, which was financed by the Republic of Korea with EUR 250,000. The Ministry provided premises and the Republic of Korea provided equipment, technology, knowledge and training. More than 200 trainings and workshops for more than 6,000 trainees have been organized so far. 45 selected municipalities participate in the project titled “Property Tax Reform”, financed by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and implemented in cooperation with MPALSG and the Standing Conference of Towns and Municipalities (SCTM). The project will last four years, and we will invest efforts in registering as many properties as possible with the tax records, as well as in ensuring that the actual situation of property in the field corresponds to tax returns paid by citizens. As a first step, municipalities and cities/towns will select people from lists of unemployed persons kept by the National Employment Service, who will be hired part-time as poll-takers and conduct controls of the properties in those cities/towns and municipalities. From 1 to 15 June, in nine local communities with the highest number of participants in the contest “Take the Pay Slip and win 2018” and which won EUR 23,000 each, voting was held to select projects to reconstruct and provide equipment for facilities and goods of public importance in which that money will be invested. Some voted for modernization of primary schools, providing equipment for day-care centres, maintenance of children’s playgrounds, procurement of vehicles or medical devices etc.