BCSP case studies on wasteful procurements in the Ministry of Interior got significant media coverage, ultimately resulting in personnel changes throughout Ministry of Interior (MoI), stated Vladimir Erceg in an interview with the POINTPULSE.
By Mateja Agatonović (BCSP) / Photo: Medija centar Beograd
Vladimir Erceg is a researcher from Belgrade Centre for Security Policy (BCSP), Serbian think tank founded in 1997. His professional focus encompasses parliamentary control, anti-corruption measures and integrity building in the defense and security sector. During our event in Pristina POINTPULSE talked with him about their measures aimed at improvement of police integrity.
What is the biggest impact of your organization in tackling police corruption?
In 2016, BCSP directly influenced the introduction of parliamentary oversight provisions into the newly enacted Law on Police. The provisions formalized good practices of the parliamentary oversight, expanded competences, and made them obligatory for the MoI. Furthermore, BCSP case studies on wasteful procurements in the same Ministry got significant media coverage, ultimately resulting in personnel changes of high officials within the material resources department and cabinet of the Minister of Interior. BCSP has developed an innovative on-line procurement website – “Red Flags“, which uncovers risky procurements in the police and the military, thus promoting the usefulness and power of open data along with the scientific methodology on expenditure performance.
What are the challenges that you face in your communication with the police?
As a result of growing politicization and instrumentalization of the police, MoI recently started to treat BCSP findings and recommendations as malicious critiques. This complicated our communication with the Ministry and made us turn more to the public as a means of achieving policy change.
What are the benefits and drawbacks of civil society networking on a regional level?
The main benefit of the regional cooperation is the synergetic comparative approach to addressing problems in systems that essentially share common problems. Furthermore, regional initiatives can have a more substantial international impact if they are gathered around one clear problem they all share. The main challenge is the absence of the culture of cooperation between public/government actors and civil society. There is a significant level of mistrust towards the civil sector in the region, so in order to create opportunities for influencing policy change think tanks need to be especially persistent in demonstrating expertise and proving good intentions.
Civil society organizations
dedicated to oversight of police integrity.