“The expert support that French Republic provides to the Republic of Serbia and the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government in implementation of Public Administration Reform, especially in the field of professional development and human resource management, continuously contributes to improving the quality of our public administration services and achieving better overall results in this area,” the State Secretary of MDULS, Maja Mačužić Puzić, has said at today’s meeting with French Public Administration Reform expert at MDULS, Francois Lafond, and the representatives of the French National Institute of Public Service and the Ministry of Public Transformation and Service of the French Republic.
Having agreed that the cooperation between the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) and the French National Institute of Public Service (INSP) has been extremely successful so far, the interlocutors have also considered potential forms of future cooperation through the signing of a new agreement between the two institutions.
Mačužić Puzić has pointed out that the Ministry remains strongly committed to modernizing and improving the efficiency, transparency and responsibility of the public administration and local self-government in this mandate, stressing that Serbia largely looks up to French practice in this area, with the aim of implementing models which are complementary to its needs.
Professionalization, lifelong professional development and capacity building of officials at all levels of the government, from national to local, are common interests and goals of both countries, as was concluded at the meeting. In this sense, as stated by Mačužić Puzić, MDULS shall focus more significant efforts on the professional development of officials in Local Self-government Units in the coming period.
The topic of the meeting was also the possibility of signing a new Administrative Agreement between MDULS and the Ministry of Public Transformation and Service of the French Republic, which would result in the intensification of cooperation in the field of Public Administration Reform, with a special emphasis on the promotion of public administration as a desirable employer and improvement in the field of service provision through digitization.