almanac on security sector oversight in the Western Balkans

Bosnia and Herzegovina
280
• Encourage the Ombdusman BiH to undertake further activities to raise
awareness and educate citizens on the Freedom of Access to Information Act
and to achieve a greater level of implementation.
• Raise awareness of the government on the need to harmonize state and entity
FoAI legal provisions to include sanction on public institutions who fail to
deliver information to requestors. (The state-level FoAI Act already contains
this provision, but the entity FoAI laws do not).
FINANCIAL TRANSPARENCY grade: 2.5
Executive Summary
Security actors began implementing significant reforms in planning and
managing public finances in 2005, with the introduction of a quality legislative
framework and the establishment of modern mid-term planning processes.
The Ministry of Finance and the Treasury BiH are responsible for preparing and
financing the budget consumers, while security actors organize this in more
detail in their rule books and decisions. The legislative framework was further
improved in 2008 with the Law on Internal Audit in Institutions in BiH and the
Law on Fiscal Council BiH. The significance of the enactment of these laws,
which are in great measure harmonized with European standards, is shown by
the fact that security sector actors take part in almost 40% of budget expenditures
at the state level and around 10% at the entity level, mostly related to
expenses of entity and cantonal police forces.
Certain legal measures to improve transparency, such as internal control
systems, are implemented in multi-year phases, thus the results of their application
are expected in the coming period. For many years, the practice in
place has been to perform annual external annual audits of financial reports
of security sector actors, gradually introducing order into the financial dealings
of institutions and ensuring their transparency. Still, some actors, such as the
Ministry of Defence BiH, continue to repeat omissions in budget expenditures
each year. Mostly, these omissions concern various personal benefits, representation,
travel fees, public procurement or the organization’s internal control
system. Actors responsible for ensuring transparency and parliamentary control
over public resources expenditure are still under equipped and lacking political
motivation to perform their necessary financial oversight function..
Features of financial control of the security sector in BiH rely on outdated
practices of traditional oversight inspection, while active financial control is less
frequently applied. Findings and opinions of the Audit Office for Institutions of
BiH relate only to describing situations and giving recommendations to security
institutions. Further procedures are within the competence of parliamentary
committees, which have failed to take concrete steps to track down directors of
institutions where financial discrepancies were noted. Civil society has pointed
out the lack of transparency in budgetary expenditures on several occasions,
but these efforts have had limited impact.
Concerning public procurement, almost all security sector actors garner similar
complaints from audit institutions and oversight agencies. The Law on Public
Procurement BiH does not specify a separate system for monitoring public
procurement in security institutions, but special provisions exist to account for
the particularity of needs and procurements of security actors. In its application
so far, the law is harmonized with EU legislation, but its implementation
has not yet reached an adequate level. Public procurement sections have been