ANALYSIS
“Government Mirror” Aims to Increase
Public Participation in Law-Making
Author: Macedonian Center for International Cooperation
Rapid advances in ICT and internet usage in Macedonia, particularly over the last five years, are being leveraged to transform the role of government,
to improve public services and lead change. Tools
have been developed that enable unprecedented access of civil society to all levels of government. However, if these e-tools and services are to succeed in
their mission of informing, involving and empowering citizens, they must be promoted, trusted, used,
monitored and properly maintained. Now that there
are conduits for public participation, expectations in
some circles have risen, yet implementation and substantive change is lacking, as is the requisite activity
and participation from civil society.
serve three main purposes: informing and encouraging participation, educating and monitoring (mainly
the ministries’ respect of the 10 day minimum public
comment period). The site offers visitors a wide variety of information on public involvement in policy
creation and law-making processes and is regularly
updated with approved laws and bylaws that regulate public participation, informative and educational articles, publications, illustrations of the policy creation cycle as well as important links. In November
2013, MCIC started publishing weekly and monthly
newsletters summarizing ENER activity to encourage public participation in the early phases of lawmaking process.
In Macedonia, government ministries are required to
publish proposed laws for at least 10 days on www.
ener.gov.mk (the “Unified National Register of Laws
of the Republic of Macedonia” or ENER) to encourage public comment before the laws enter parliamentary procedure.1 The Ministry that proposed the
law is required to respond to each comment and finally to publish a report detailing any consultations it
conducted both on ENER and its own site.
Since timely notification
is essential to obtaining
meaningful participation
in the legislative process
from civil society, good
practice dictates that all
ministries consistently use ENER as it was intended. The results of “Government Mirror” monitoring are available by ministry under “Violations”.
In 2013, the biggest violator of guidelines was the
Ministry of Finance with 23 violations. A counter is
also shown on the homepage to highlight all violations registered in the current year. For example, the
site noted 57 violations of the public comment period
minimum in 2013. There were 123 draft law proposals
last year, thus no less than 46% of the draft-law procedure public comment periods were violated!
Given the obvious advantages of the ENER system
(24/7 availability, low relative cost), The Macedonian
Center for In ѕɹ