Functional Review of the Ministry of Environment and Spatial Planning

horizontal communication and brings the immense problem in the strategic planning and coordination but
also leads to separate capacities for each department that include such horizontal functions as policy and
law drafting, resp. monitoring of environmental media.
It is widely known that a multidisciplinary sector requires an enormous effort of strategic planning and
coordination. Without due coordinating mechanisms, the administrative system for environment and
spatial planning cannot function effectively. Unfortunately, the effective horizontal communication and topbottom
planning approach are still missing.
The cost of these unnecessary units is in the management cost of coordinating the very high number of
units, in limiting flexibility in the use of human resources and in reinforcing the “silo” mentality of civil
servants where they see only narrow horizons of their very small units.
Recommendation II.1: decrease the number of units at all levels and remove incentives to create
superfluous units by: i) explicitly stating that departments do not need to have divisions to exist as
departments; ii) abolishing sectors except for divisions larger than a certain number (10 is recommended).
II. 2 Integrating small units
Some of the support functions are fractured across MESP. Primary candidates for a merger are some of
the administrative tasks of the central MESP. Functions like HR management, procurement, internal audit,
etc. have a relatively small number of employees and administrative transactions (e.g. procurement). With
merging these non-core functions of central MESP into the Central Administration Department (CAD), one
can expect savings through improved economies of scale.
An integration of the Office for gender equality, human and minority rights into the Central Administration
Department should be considered. There might be a dispute about its independence; however,
independence can be achieved through managerial subordination. This can be achieved by limiting
personal and financial decision making freedom of the director of CAD toward this office.
A general consensus has been reached in the FRIDOM Project team that the EU Integration Office and
the Information and Public Relation Office should keep their independence, despite their limited number of
staff. This decision can be supported by the ever increasing importance of the EU Integration Office which,
probably, in the short-term period will face an enormous challenge of EU accession process, as well as
the need for coordination of the EU related activities across the whole government.
Overall policy coordination is an important task that has not been addressed properly in MESP. Technical
departments develop their intrinsic policies but there is limited capacity to analyze them with an
environmental multi-disciplinary approach, transfer these policies into work plans and monitor on a regular
basis the implementation process. Furthermore, there is little or no capacity to co-ordinate among different
government planning documents (MTEF, EPAP, KEAP etc.) and Ministry yearly work plans.
The sEU Integration Office is in charge of coordinating the European integration issues as they relate to
the MESP. This job mainly consists of working with the Agency for Coordination, Development and
European Integration (ACDEI) providing input and following the implementation of the European
Partnership Action Plan (EPAP). Considering that the EPAP and the whole European agenda will continue
to dominate the policy discourse in the near future, the EU Integration Office scope could be broadened to
include general policy coordination issues as well. It should be noted that this would not include technical
level details of the policy initiatives which would remain under coordination by particular technical
departments.
The EU Integration and Policy Coordination Office would be responsible for the following main functions:
Leading development and holding responsibility for coordination of implementation of the ministry’s
main strategic and business planning documents such as MTEF (priority and policy part), EPAP,
KEAP and annual work plan;
Being the focal point for the centre of government and other horizontal ministries, namely, the Office of
Prime Minister, the Ministry of Finance and Economy, and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and
Rural Development;
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