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The rise of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs), together with social media and E-governance, has provided great opportunities to revamp the relationship between citizens and governments, crafting greater transparency and space for participatory democracy. While Kosovo’s legal framework guarantees transparency and accountability, as well as citizens’ access to public services, including information and public documents, this has many flaws in practical implementation. However, some positive examples have been noted recently, including the access to the work of the Assembly through the launching of an electronic tracking system, providing public access to all information and documents on draft laws under its review, as also noted by the EU country report. This form allows for proactive communication, as it enables following of the work of the Assembly and its bodies and is helpful especially to the media and civil society, but also citizens overall. However, this example has not been followed by other institutions, particularly when it comes to budgetary transparency. While the Ministry of Finances has started publishing comparative financial data on a monthly basis on its website, public institutions remain hesitant to publish and open data on their actual expenditures. Civil society organizations have demanded access to expenditures, but institutions have come up with somewhat ridiculous justification to reject these requests.When faced with rejected access to credit card bills and other expenses of the Office of the Prime Minister, a Pristina-based NGO was provided with the justification that 'providing such information could infringe the privacy rights of public officials because invoices for food and drinks could reveal religious and dietary information about individuals'. The latter sued the Office of the Prime Minister and, after five years of legal battles, the Court decided in its favor citing that '… in this regard, they have the reasonable interest to be informed for every cent spent by public officials who have been entrusted with public authorizations and, based on this fact, they need to be kept accountable for those expenses'. Later on, this NGO used this precedent to demand access to expenditures of Kosovo municipalities, and received responses and all the bills from 22 of them. This access, while commended, should be done in a proactive manner and it should not happen only upon requests. A recent good example of opening data to the public was opening tender contracts, a step initiated by the municipality of Gjakova/Djakovica and then followed by other municipalities which, then, prompted the Public Procurement Commission to issue a decision calling upon public institutions to do the same. This data ‘mine’ was especially commended by civil society and media, as it allowed more ‘digging’ into tender awarding, compliance with legislation and potential conflicts of interest, or political affiliations. Civil society has been calling for a better and more proactive communication with citizens, especially when it comes to municipalities, as they are the first address at which citizens should get informed, especially on public services. Nevertheless, while municipal websites are adequately equipped for provision of comprehensive opportunities for information on various areas, they do not yet act as instruments of debate, as the communication remains a one-way street. Instead, the most common information found there are day-to-day promotions of the mayor’s work. On the other hand, there is a lack of information and presentation on municipal spending priorities for the upcoming year, strategic plans related to economic and social development, spatial planning, or specific competing proposals for capital infrastructure projects, or its delivery of services. Even when the municipalities have uploaded their development or other documents, draft or actual budgets, this is often done in the PDF form, unaccompanied by discussion, elaboration, summary or other means of making the information more digestible, such as visual representations. Some municipalities are striving to advance their e-services, and others are following in their footsteps. A Democracy Plus report on public procurement in municipalities commended the municipality of Pristina, noting that it does not only share good practices of transparency, but also has an ‘’Open Data’’ platform, providing more detailed information to citizens and contractors who may gain more confidence in this practice, as this helps to build trust in the municipality and its practices. When it comes to access to information, public institutions’ websites lack equal treatment of citizens as the usage of official language is not always respected as foreseen by law, particularly in ethnically mixed municipalities. Serb-majority municipalities do not always translate information to Albanian language, and vice-versa, in order to inform all their citizens on the developments in the municipality. Hence, while some progress has been achieved, it is of outmost importance to transform the websites of Kosovo public institutions in a meaningful and two-way communication. Though promoting the work of the leader of an institution is important, the websites should focus more on informing and engaging citizens to take an active part in decision-making. Well-informed citizens may and will serve to hold an institution to account and provide much needed assistance in making better legislation, prioritizing investments, expose malpractices and mismanagement and increase the feeling of citizen ownership in institutional projects and initiatives. When citizens feel ownership of a certain project, they will pay their dues in order to ensure proper functioning of such a project and contribute in reaping its benefits. A civil society platform ndreqe.com is a great example of how such a model of cooperation could function. Platform ndreqe.com is dedicated to improving local government intervention on citizen reporting of public service complaints. The platform provides the opportunity for citizens to report neighbourhood problems with trash, potholes, public lights and sidewalks in Albanian and Serbian languages. The citizens’ demand for such a platform was noticed from the start, while 2,965 cases have been reported so far. Since the beginning, the platform has sought cooperation with the municipalities and it currently actively cooperates with about 20 municipalities that have already addressed 973 reported cases and resolved them. There are few such examples of good cooperation across Kosovo and public institutions and especially municipalities should use these platforms to bridge the communication gap with citizens that is evident in public consultations on all important matters.
