The PSP will support the Assembly of the Republic of North Macedonia (the Assembly) independence efforts through consensus-building, structural reform, and capacity building in the Assembly’s institutional development; its legislative and oversight roles; and its institutional transparency and accountability.

The PSP will be implemented by the Center for Change Management, National Democratic Institute and the Institute for Democracy Societas Civilis Skopje to support the Assembly’s strategic planning; human resources management reforms; improved regulatory impact assessment and procurement processes; commitment to open data, and, by gauging public opinion and monitoring reform efforts, including greater civic engagement in policy-making processes.

With the return of the public administration in their regular offices, protocols will need to be urgently developed that ensure employees’ safety, organisation of the work and continuation of remote execution of selected work processes. Learning the lessons from the pandemic response, further digitalisation will be pursued, supported by amended legal regulations to better prepare the administration in an event of recurring pandemic or future crises. Newly designed digital work procedures will be proposed to selected central institutions and scoping of the needs of these institutions will be conducted to ensure smooth transition to digital work with a list of priorities ad timelines for enabling digital processes. Selected institutions will be supported with proposed structures of shared platforms and assessment of levels of remote access, prior to a wider multiplication of the model in other institutions.

Several important electronic services will be developed within the Project that are often used in a citizen’s lifecycle, such as electronic enrolment in kindergarten, enrolment in primary school, applying for students scholarships and nostrification of foreign diplomas. Тhe development of е-services will contribute for providing better and simpler public services, as well as for the reduction of physical contacts with the administration in times of crisis.

Delivering services to citizens is the essence of the work of most government institutions. Tasks like paying taxes, renewing driving licenses, enrolling in schools and applying for benefits are often the most tangible interactions citizens have with their government. Improving accessibility of public services to all groups of citizens, including vulnerable groups (marginalized groups, ethnic minorities, persons with disability) is critical in building trust in government and delivering necessary structural reforms in line with the EU standards.

The focus of this programme shall be put on these services related to life events, more specifically 118 services relating to various life events, categorized in eight areas:

• Manner and procedure for starting a business (for example, preparing a business plan, gathering information where you can find support for starting a business, registration in competent institutions and funds, registration for a tax number, registering employees);
• Family (for example, obtaining birth certificates, obtaining personal documents, exercising parental rights);
• Employment (for example, exercising unemployment rights, advising on financial borrowing, labor market counseling, job search assistance, counseling for re qualification);
• Learning/studying (for example searching for educational programs, recognition of diplomas, scholarships, financial counseling, career counseling, practical work);
• Initiation of a misdemeanor procedure (for example obtaining accurate information about the procedure, evidences, rights of the party, deadlines, legal remedies);
• General business procedure (for example, obtaining detailed information about tax procedures, payment of contributions, accounting procedures, financial statements);
• Owning a vehicle and driving (for example, buying, importing, registration of a vehicle);
• Moving (for example, changing personal documents, obtaining information about public services at the place of relocation, such as schools, hospitals).

The activities in the work programme on improving public services largely encompass strengthening the capacities of CSOs for safeguarding citizens’ interests and their fundamental rights, thus contributing to one of the pillars of modern democracies – accountable, transparent, participatory, inclusive and effective public administration with high quality of service delivery for citizens. The work programme provides a participatory process, led by CCM in close cooperation with civil society organisations’ networks and competent institutions in order to identify policy measures to ensure access to all citizens to improved, more secure and more efficient services. 

This project is completely focused on the potential and existing women entrepreneurs and will provide the necessary support for them to strengthen their business skills as well as additional technical help and support for the women so that they can develop and expand micro and small businesses in the cross-border region between Polog in Macedonia and Elbasan in Albania.

The necessary plans will be made for building up of the capacities of the women entrepreneurs in three areas:

1. Building up of skills and capabilities of the potential entrepreneurs for starting their own business/

2. Improvement of the production and profit for the existing micro-    enterprises and organizing of the support for building up of the capacities of the companies connected with the production of new products, improvement of the sales and trade, networking and B2B meetings.

3. Revising of the policies for development of the micro-enterprises and support of the women entrepreneurship

The institutional grant is awarded by the Civica Mobilitas programme financed by the Swiss agency for development and cooperation (SDC) represented by the Swiss embassy in the Republic of North Macedonia. The grant is intended to support CCM in conducting activities for institutional development and organizational strengthening.