Effective public services in South East Europe

Transparency, effective rule of law, low corruption and high civil society participation characterise high-quality public governance, which is made up of political, institutional and legal arrangements. This chapter on the Effective Public Services Dimension considers four sub-dimensions in its assessment of public services performance and policy development. The Regulation and Legislation Sub-Dimension gauges the development of tools to improve existing and future legislation such as the regulatory guillotine, regulatory impact analysis, forward-planning mechanisms and public consultations. The Civil Service Sub-Dimension describes human resource management and performance appraisal systems that seek to match public servant skills with policy goals. The Government Accountability Sub-Dimension analyses access to public information, e-government services and commitment to the Open Government Partnership. The Multi-Level Governance Sub-Dimension investigates local government autonomy by measuring tax decentralisation and alignment with the European Charter of Local Self-Government.