1. Opening Government in Croatia
Sandra Pernar
Advisor in the Government Office for
Cooperation with NGOs

2. Open Government Partnership
• Croatia joined the initiative in 2012
• First Action Plan for period 2012-2013
• Second Action Plan for period 2014-2016
• Government Program for period 2011-2015:
Goal of the Government is to promote new concept of partnership
between the public authorities and citizens and civil society and thus
open space of joint action in creating, implementing and monitoring
public policies that are of direct interest of citizens, and all together
encouraging transparency and openness of the work of the public
bodies and citizens’ participation in decision making.

3. First Action Plan
• Priority areas:
- Fiscal transparency
- Access to information
- Use of IT
- Participation of citizens and civil society

4. First Action Plan
• OGP Council – gathering both government and CSO
representatives
• AP received highest rank upon SMART criteria
• The most significant impact achieved in the field of
citizens involvement, public consultations and the right
to access information – all being interrelated areas
crucial for success of OGP initiative

5. Second Action Plan
• Priority areas:
- Access to information
- Open data
- Transparency of public policies
- Participation of interested public in devolping
and monitoring of public policies

6. Second Action Plan
• Priority activities:
- Database on payments form the state budget
- Central Government portal
- Open Data portal
- e-Consultations

7. Policy framework for public consultations
• National Strategy for the Creation of an
Enabling Environment for Civil Society
Development 2006-2011 (July 2006)
• Strategy of Reform of State Administration
2008-2011 (March 2008)
• Action plan of the Strategy of Combating
Corruption (June 2008)

8. Introducing new standards of public
consultations in policy making
• Code of Practice on Consultation with the Interested Public in
Procedures of Adopting Laws, Other Regulations and Acts
(November 2009)
• National Strategy for Creating Enabling Environment for
CSOs 2012-2016 - measures for strengthening capacities of
civil servants for effective involvement of CSOs and interested
public in policy formulation and implementation (July 2012)
• Government Rules of Procedures - amended to
institutionalize practice of feedback on consultation results in
accordance with the Code (October 2012)
• Law on Access to information – proactive transparency and
publishing consultation documents (February 2013)
• Constitutional Court decisions

9. Putting in practice new public
consultation standards
• Consultation coordinators appointed in all ministries and
government offices
• Training programmes and peer-to-peer support for
consultation coordinators - State School for Public
Administration
• Coordination meetings of consultation coordinators – peer to
peer support and exchange of best practices
• Government Office web page on consultation - focal point for
interested public searching for information on all open/closed
public consultations of state administration bodies
• Annual reports - Monitoring the implementation of the Code

10. Detailed step-by-step Guidelines on
implementing the Code
• Detailed Guidelines for implementing the Code of practice on
consultation (2010)
• the question is not why but rather how to conduct meaningful
public consultation
all ministries – standardized public consultation web page
standardized forms for gathering contributions from the
interested public
standardized forms for reporting on the results of public
consultation: We asked – You said – We did

11. Big increase in the number of public
consultations in last 4 years
• In 2011 – 48 public consultations
• In 2014 – 544 public consultations

12. In 2014 – 41% of analyzed comments
was accepted or partially accepted
• 14975 of analyzed comments
• 3366 accepted
• 2743 partially accepted
• 8866 not accepted

13. Why „e-Consultations”?
• Unique address for all consultations of state
administration
• User friendly application for easy access to
participation in consultations
• Transparent and open system of consultations
• Quick and Efficient analysis of received
information

14. https://savjetovanja.gov.hr/

15. Thank you for your attention!
Contact:
sandra.pernar@uzuvrh.hr