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Open and Accountable Municipalities (OZONE)

The OZONE Project aims to generate and support the political will for more citizen-centered policy at the level of municipalities.

The approach is to select motivated newly-elected mayors and provide them and their municipal staff with assessment by experts with governance experience in order to enable the mayors to set a New Policy Programme (NPP) with specific and measurable goals  during the first 2 years of their mandate. Mayors and municipalities will be selected based on demonstrated interest, geographic diversity, and potential impact. The contents of each NPP should be consistent with existing local development strategies, but also include internal administrative changes, savings and new practices to strengthen openness and accountability of the municipality vis-à-vis citizens. OZONE Project will work with each municipality to establish a monitoring system for the level of implementation of each NPP goal. New practices including monitoring and implementation will be implemented through a training programme customized for each municipality. The final Project component is to establish or strengthen communication platforms (phone, social media, apps) for citizen concerns to be easily communicated and responded to in a timely manner, as well as providing frequent and clear updates towards citizens about the progress of the municipality to-wards the established goals.

The overall Project objective: Mayors’ offices in selected municipalities consider citizens’ needs and quality of services has improved. The desired impact is to establish practices of accountable municipal governance which continue in the participating municipalities and which are adopted both in additional municipalities and at other levels of government. 

Contact
Mario Vignjević, Programme Officer, Embassy of Sweden, mario.vignjevic@gov.se
Randall Puljek-Shank, Project Manager, IREI, randall@irei.ba

Project duration:
05.2021 - 10.2023
Themes:
Democratisation, Local infrastructure, Strategic planning and development management
Status:
Ongoing
Strategic partner:
Local Governments
Implementer:
Institute for Development and European Integration (IREI)
Donor:
Government of Sweden, Government of Switzerland
Project implemented in:
Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republika Srpska
Cantons:
Sarajevo Canton, Una-Sana Canton
Municipalities (6):
Bihać, Centar Sarajevo, Gradiška, Ilidža, Modriča, Novo Sarajevo