Reform in Progress: Current Trends and Concerns in Developing ...

this project, aiming to ensure access to better information for better management. “In
education specifically, and focusing on bilateral work, at any given moment in the past
decade, a largish donor such as USAID would have been spending, very conservatively,
some US $2-3 million per year on information systems-related development in education
alone” (Crouch, 2001). According to the InfoDev website (2010), little is known about
best practices in implementation of an EMIS, despite a plethora of EMIS-related projects
funded by World Bank. InfoDev points out the waste and inefficiency of such
investments in the absence of meaningful data, and calls for rigorous research on EMIS
implementation and effectiveness.
EMIS development in the Republic of Serbia
Back in mid-2001, an initiative was made within the Ministry of Education and
Sports of Republic of Serbia (currently Ministry of Education - MoE) to begin the
development of an EMIS. This decision was backed up with the results of a wide
consultancy process, conducted among teachers and administration staff employed in the
education sector, experts, and researchers. The main conclusion was that reliable and
accurate data on various education-related issues were missing. The first project on EMIS
development was outlined at the beginning of 2002. The Project was titled Education
Information System, and its implementation started in 2003. It was positioned as a MoE
Project and was funded by the World Bank credit arrangement. The aim of the project
was to improve speed of access to data (all data would be stored in the same place), to
secure continuity in data collection and processing, and to open the possibility for a
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