[National Conference]

On May 30, 2012 in Sofia FLGR held a National conference "Monitoring of public services at local level" as a closing event of the project "Monitoring of the effective management of public resources".

The event was attended by 90 representatives of NGOs, ministries, Local initative froups, municipalities and regional governments across the country: from Svishtov and Varna, Smolyan and Vratsa, Silistra and Sofia...

The forum participants were welcomed by Zdravko Sechkov, FLGR, and Lenko Lenkov, America for Bulgaria Foundation.

Petar Paunov, Mayor of Kyustendil, addressed the participants with the introductory words on relations "municipality - citizens" a

nd the benefits of transparent local authorities and civic monitoring of their work. FLGR and representatives of partner municipalities presented the methodology and results of citizen monitoring of four public services at local level:

- Cleanliness of streets, public places and quality of garbage disposal (Gotse Delchev);
- Maintenance of green areas (Kyustendil);
- Maintenance of the street network (Knezha);
- Home social patronage (Knezha).

As a result of monitoring in Gotse Delchev the concession for separate collection of garbage is terminated by the municipality and a new service provider will be looked up.

As a result of monitoring in Kyustendil is built playground in the district "Zapad".

As a result of monitoring in Knezha the views of citizens and the municipality leadership regarding the priority which streets to be repaired had been set closer and portions of clients of home care were enriched.

Antonia Raleva of Ruse Regional Administration presented the beginning of civil monitoring of maintenance of the street network in all municipalities in the region, which started in June 2012 and was based on the methodology developed by FLGR. Planned is the application of two more methodologies of FLGR in citizen monitoring on the territory of Rousse Region: that of the clean streets, public places and quality of garbage disposal and Green areas maintenance.

Other practices implemented in Bulgaria in the field of civic monitoring were presented:

- Daniela Dimitrova from the Association "Pleven Public Fund - Community Centers" presented realized citizen monitoring of the compliance program for small settlements in the municipality of Pleven (2007-2013);

- Antoaneta Tzoneva, Institute for Public Environment Development, presented realized in 2005 the first (and only) monitoring the performance of Sofia Municipal Council and the long-term results of it;

- Gergana Zhuleva, Access to Information Program, briefed the participants of the forum with the trends and problems of active transparency of municipalities (Results of the audit of AIP, 2012);

- Pavel Antonov, BlueLink.net, presented three electronic instruments for citizen participation at local level;

- Miglena Kuzmanova, ESRI BULGARIA, provided information of the platform for registering irregularities Aktiven.BG and urged municipalities and other local institutions to take advantage of opportunities provided by this free tool.

At the forum participants were given a brochure with 30 best practices from Bulgaria and the world in citizen monitoring of public services at local level. It can be found online on the FLGR website.

Presentation practices attracted the interest of participants and generated extensive discussion. Shared experience created new ideas for future projects.

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[Summary]

In carrying out the project "Monitoring of the effective management of public resources" FLGR succeeded to involve as project partners municipalities of three formats - small, medium sized and big. This now gives us the opportunity to say that citizen monitoring can operate in any municipality.

Citizens of the three municipalities chose for monitoring services that we did not predict, and once again proved that each municipality has its own specifics and communities have their own rules and pace of development.

Instead of the planned 3 monitored were four services - Knezha community declared that the monitoring of 2 services is needed. It should be noted that all the services to be monitored had monopoly character: 1 - in the social sphere, 1 - in infrastructure, and 2 - in the utilities' sphere.

The services for monitoring were chosen as follows:

- Cleanliness of streets, public places and quality of garbage disposal (Gotse Delchev);
- Maintenance of green areas (Kyustendil);
- Maintenance of the street network (Knezha);
- Home social patronage (Knezha).

The monitoring took place from July till November 2011 and 911 volunteers took part in it. Where it was possible and within the possibilities limits, local governments have made improvements to the services in the course of monitoring. Voice of the people was heard, the companies - service providers felt the focus of public attention and improved service within the possibilities.

In three municipalities partner was overcome:

- The distrust of citizens that their voice will be heard;

- The concern of local authorities, the results of the civic monitoring will be used in the political struggle for local elections 2011.

Through training, learning by doing and experience exchange the capacity of communities for citizen monitoring was developed.

Active citizens were motivated to express their views and defend them through trainings in citizen journalism.

All this resulted in a higher number of participants in the citizen monitoring than planned. The two distance courses conducted ('Good Governance Principles at Local Level' - 35 participants and 'Prevention of the Corruption on Local Level' - 33 participants) were a possibility for raising the qualification of the municipal and the citizenship of active citizens of the municipalities. This ensures greater openness of the municipality in the future and will positively affect interaction citizens - community.

The Volunteer Days, carried out in the three pilot municipalities (more than 270 volunteers pf every age joined) supported the recommendations of the citizens expressed during the monitoring and enhanced the overall impact of the realized project.

The views of citizens and municipality in the problem areas were drawn together, making the work of the municipalities more efficient and citizens - more satisfied.

As most significant results in the project (beyond work on specific requests of citizens expressed during the citizen monitoring), we consider:

- The termination of one concession contract in the municipality of Gotse Delchev - (that on Separate waste collection) and the intention of the municipality to announce bidding procedure for a new service provider;

- Replication of the methodologies for citizen monitoring developed by FLGR at regional level (Rousse Region);

- Dissemination of the lessons learned from the project among many NGOs and municipalities across the country, some of them expressed an interest to implement citizen monitoring in their communities.

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[Conclusions and recommendations]

At the end of the project "Monitoring of the effective management of public resources" the team of FLGR formulated conclusions and recommendations why the local authorities in Bulgaria should make citizen monitoring of public services at local level frequently used tool of governance:

1. Citizen monitoring is important for improving the quality of public services at local level, especially those who are natural monopolies.

2. Citizen monitoring works in communities of any size - small, medium, large.

3. To achieve real and quick results in provision of services of high quality and in a faster way it is important the citizen monitoring to be initiated or supported by the municipality.

4. Citizen monitoring can be organized and conducted by the municipality, without undue burden of the municipal employees.

5. By citizen monitoring the citizens and the municipality harmonize views and priorities. 6. Citizen monitoring of each service is specific and requires consideration of appropriate tools and duration of the monitoring.

7. Citizen monitoring of public service is a useful tool for the municipal administration to obtain feedback on the level of citizen satisfaction with the service provided.

8. Through regular feedback municipality can assess whether a public service is expedient.

9. By getting propositions from the citizens municipality can improve the quality of the services provided. Conditions for solving emerging problems quickly are created.

10. When local government is responding to proposals made by the community, the citizens are more motivated to participate in the monitoring of the services. This contributes to the establishment of a working model for interaction between citizens and the municipality.

11. Civic monitoring allows the renegotiation of the terms with the service providing companies - both by the citizens and the municipality.

12. Municipality and service providers see the services with the eyes of citizens.

13. Civic monitoring indicates to what extent the conceived and planned by the municipality is functioning and achieves the set goals.

14. Civic monitoring achieves improvement of the service provided by the fact that the provider feels in focus of interest of the citizens. Improvement can occur in the course of the civil monitoring. Thus the management of service delivery companies is improved. Also more efficient spending of public funds I s achieved.

15. Civic monitoring allows the justification of budget expenditures.

16. Civil monitoring is important to establish the municipal budget for next year.

17. Civil monitoring and voluntary participation assists the employees of the municipal inspectorate.

18. It turns out that in the cases of some services people are willing to pay more to achieve quality improvement.

19. When involved in citizen monitoring, the members of the community become familiar with the parameters of operation of the service (when, how much, how), which increases the transparency of the municipality.

20. Citizen participation in monitoring and implementation of the recommendations of the people lead to greater civic activism at local level, civil sector involved in decision making, greater trust between citizens and the municipality.

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[Interesting Bulgarian Web Places]

Bulgaria Entered National Geographic '50 Tours of a Lifetime'
A Bulgarian tour features for the first time in the National Geographic Traveler magazine's annual "50 Tours of a Lifetime".

Three Sisters and Andrey 2009
Multi-award winning film by Boris Despodov & Andrey Paounov.
Hand drawn hyper-realistic motion painting remix of the Russian Classic.

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