With the support of the British Embassy Skopje, ​​together with the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy within the project "Digitalization for business continuity in the public sector", we are working on the process of digitalization of the enrollment of children in kindergartens. This process enables electronic registration of a child in kindergarten, management of waiting lists for enrollment and quick insight into the situation with full capacity of kindergartens.

The CCM team successfully completed the Design Thinking methodology training, which is currently one of the most well-known methods worldwide for process redesign. With the help of Design Thinking, new innovative products and services are created according to the needs of the users.

We continue to invest in human capital.

At today's debate on topic: Resilience and adaptability of the education sector in the Republic of North Macedonia, together with the Minister of Education and science Mila Carovska and the experts Nick Morgan from Scotland and Sandra Kucina Softic from Croatia, we talked about how countries in Europe, including our country, have coped with the sudden changes in the education sector, that is, the change from classroom to online teaching.
We shared the experiences from the implementation of distance learning in our country as well as in Scotland and Croatia. We talked about the opinions and experiences of teachers, parents and students, which are part of the whole process and agreed on the importance of digital literacy and at what level it is in our country, and at what level in more developed countries.
It is necessary to modernize/ digitize education in all segments and in the part of services,
as well as reforms that will create an easily adaptable teaching process in times of crisis.

The debate is supported by the European Union and the Civica Mobilitas program

The process of digitalization of education as one of the priority goals in the program commitments of the Government and the Ministry of Education and Science in order to modernize and integrate the national education system in the European educational space, among other things, means digitalization of services offered to citizens.

In that regard, the Ministry of Education and Science has prepared an action plan that envisages changing the manner and simplifying the procedures through which citizens can turn to receive a certain service in order to exercise a certain right.

The first results of the CCM project for digitalization in the public sector are e- services through which it will be possible to submit a request for nostrification and equivalence of educational qualifications acquired outside the Republic of North Macedonia. The developed background software enables electronic management and resolution of cases by the commissions in the Ministry of Education and Science.

Electronic services can be accessed through the National Portal for e-services www.uslugi.gov.mk, with a simple search.

The service was developed within the project "Digitalization for business continuity in the public sector“ funded by the Government of the United Kingdom, with the support of the British Embassy Skopje, and implemented by the Center for Change Management.

The integration of the services on the portal uslugi.gov.mk was done in cooperation with the Ministry of Information Society and Administration.

Within the project "Development of the program for implementation of the National Energy Development Strategy", we organized a focus group, whose goal was to access the level of awareness of the planned reforms in the energy area, and to identify the specific problems that may arise with the implementation of the reforms, especially with the “Green agenda” which stipulates radical transition from conventional energy sources. The results of the focus group will be used in the process of the update of the Strategy, and significantly in the development of the Communication strategy in order to define the communication approach to different target groups.

The focus group was attended by civil society organizations working in the fields of energy and environment protection, and organizations which represent various target groups of citizens related to gender equality and social inclusion.

The focus group was conducted online, on the ZOOM platform. The online platform Sli.do was used for fostering interaction in the background for additional interaction, such as polls and questions, questions and answers, comments etc.

The project "Development of a program for implementation of the National Energy Development Strategy" is funded by the British Embassy Skopje through the Good Governance Fund (GGF), in order to support the Government in developing a quality, structured and sustainable Implementation Program, which will address the "green scenario", which is the most transformative option in the Strategy, aimed at using renewable energy sources with a positive effect on the environment.

The project is led by the international company Tetra Tech, while the project team is led by Public Administration International - PAI in cooperation with technical experts from the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts (MANU) and the Center for Change Management.

We have successfully completed the campaign "November - month of public service discussions". Together with partner organizations, we conducted public service research at central and local levels. The purpose of these discussions is to provide an overview of all identified problems before decision makers and public institutions, findings, but also recommendations from researchers to improve service delivery in many selected areas of society. The recommendations provide a basis for initial steps to improve some of the analyzed services, and before that to open a public discussion for modernization of services for citizens. The Assembly has an obligation to supervise the work of public institutions from a functional, financial and in terms of implementation of the planned reforms, hence the delivery of services to users, and the basis for oversight hearings can be data and information from civil society organizations. Such synergy is not only a modern way of broad involvement of citizens in policy making and monitoring, but also a jointly strengthened influence for the implementation of reforms for the benefit of citizens.

Citizens have numerous problems in communicating and receiving services from institutions on a daily basis. Although they are generally satisfied with the delivery of services by public sector institutions, still in a deeper conversation and in a more detailed analysis, the problems are present everywhere, both centrally and locally, and relate to different aspects of the services:

- Information about the services that are incomplete and delay the receipt of the service,

- The quality of the service which is reflected in the quality of the documents, the professional conduct of the employees and the observance of the prescribed procedure,

- Non-transparency in the work,

- Human factor, error,

- Unequal treatment of service users on different grounds,

- Absurd flaws in the system and

- Absence of hearing for the needs of the citizens.

Summary recommendations for improving public services:

- Improving the availability of information about the services, but also their harmonization in all possible places where they are available.

- Publishing all services on the only website provided as a source of information on services for citizens - the portal www.uslugi.gov.mk and their digital delivery.

- Strengthening the capacities of the employees who work on direct delivery of services to the citizens, primarily through continuous trainings.

- Greater digitalization of procedures in the public sector will inevitably increase the quality of services because it will exclude part of the possibility of human error. Digitalization will equally lead to greater speed and efficiency in work

- Involvement of citizens in the design of services that they use themselves

- Opening wide debates in the public on the problems with public services, which would involve the users and the competent institutions to jointly find appropriate solutions, primarily in the interest and benefit of the citizens.

The campaign was organized within the program: "Improved service delivery for citizens citizens by active engagement of the Assembly", supported by the European Union and the Civica Mobilitas program, which aims to stimulate public debate to improve the quality of public services that are most often used by citizens.

Public service research reports conducted by civil society organizations can be found at the following link: https://bit.ly/3qqLJxS