No abstract

Contemporary activities of both private and public sector enacts new methods and principles in terms of adapting to everyday market changes. Public sector organizations, including local self-government institutions, are challenged with new demands that are not always easily achieved. At such a time, the application of contemporary managerial concepts, such as New Public Management and Good Governance, are crucial for the efficiency and effectiveness of the public sector organizations. In transitional countries, and especially those that are candidates for accession to the European Union, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, the most demanding criterion is public administration reform. That reform includes improvement of organizational and functional efficiency and effectiveness, reorganizing public administration from the state level to local self-government level, and improvement of public services. In this regard, the paper focuses on research of the efficiency of the public sector in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the countries of the Western Balkans, with focus on citizen satisfaction with certain public sector services. Citizen satisfaction with public services and public institutions can be considered as a direct outcome of government’s policy and activities. Also, citizen satisfaction survey results can reveal a lot on the issues of how governments function, both in terms of citizen actual experiences and their expectations. The paper presents the results of Western Balkans countries compared with the results of European Union countries in terms of health services, education, ease of doing business and e-government. Western Balkans countries do not have a sufficiently developed system for monitoring the satisfaction of public service users and harmonizing reform measures, and also they have not developed well a system of functional cooperation with private and civil sectors in order to improve the quality of public services and citizen satisfaction.

The scope of state activities, particularly of the public administration is increasing and becoming more demanding. State administration has always served to some higher interest, which slightly changed during the history, but regardless, their activities covers numerous areas of everyday life and often complex and formalized procedures that require specific knowledge and skills.Contemporary approach of state administration needs to be rationalized and inclusive, due to global context, availability of information, higher level of citizen rights and increased needs and other factors. State is adopting new patterns, and one of them that enables the state to follow the social dynamic and rationalize its activities and resources is Public Private Partnership. In this paper the concept of Public Private Partnership has been presented with fundamental motives for its implementation, as well as the benefits and negative aspects, throughout the prism of three countries from Central and Eastern Europe, but practically the same geographical region and with similar political, economic and legal background: Bulgaria, Hungary and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The paper presents the legislative, political and administrative perspective of Public Private Partnership, having in mind that first two countries recently became European Union members, and are just completing the transition that the third country, Bosnia and Herzegovina is starting at the moment.

The application of the principle of good governance and public administration for the citizen implies a series of procedural rules that guarantee the exercise and protection of rights at all stages of the administrative procedure and administrative dispute. Sublimated through effective procedural rules oriented to the relationship of administrative bodies with the parties, it creates preconditions for modern modalities of public administration functioning. In the process of integration into the European administrative space, it is necessary to incorporate European procedural standards into legal regulations, as well as the principles of reliability and legitimate expectations, proportionality, responsibility, effectiveness, etc. The process of democratic development and maturation requires continuity in changes in the normative framework which gradually removes administrative barriers and by which the citizen from a mere addressee becomes an active participant in the process of administrative decision-making. Outdated but stable administrative procedural solutions in the Federation of BiH require structural change and the establishment of a new constellation of relations between the state administration and the citizen, which puts the citizen at the center and final determinant of the modern way of functioning of public administration, with consistent implementation of basic administrative procedural principles at all phases of administrative decision-making.