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The Program is funded by The World Bank and implemented by URI and National Center for Social Studies.
Start Date: December 2002; Completion Date: December 2003
The program includes two components:
Component I. Multi – service survey for the city of Tirana and establishment of an Information Centre in the Municipality of Tirana;
Specific Objectives of the study
To observe and identify the most used public services, by ordinary citizens and entrepreneurs.
To observe the quality, quantity, extension and frequency of services currently used by the clients and identify the main reasons that affects the service quality.
Project Implementation and Results:
Awhile organizing and implementing the household survey in Tirana , URI has had a clear understanding on its importance, as a tool to help Tirana Municipality keep track of the quality of the services they provide and then take the necessary steps to improve services on an ongoing basis. The survey described here is designed such as it can be easily repeated by Tirana municipality on a regular basis, to allow city managers make comparisons which can indicate whether progress has been made, whether problems have arisen, and whether past changes in government programs or policies have affected service effectiveness and quality.
The target groups of this study were the households that live in Tirana and entrepreneurs that exercise economic activity in Tirana city too. About 1,200 households were objects of interviews. All work was done in close cooperation with the Human Resources Department. The questionnaire and the survey results are available at Tirana Municipality WebSite.
The responses examination for the question for each category of respondent. This information indicates which service elements are doing well, which not so well, for different categories of clients. (The tables of findings show both the percentage of respondents giving each response rating and also the number of respondents in each category so that analysts can consider the relative size of each category).
The results from each question are presented in a concise, easy-to-interpret format. Clear labels are provided for all rows and columns. In general, the principal form of presentation of survey findings expresses the findings as the percentage of the sample that gave each response. Results are presented for the whole sample and are broken out by key categories of customers. The data is reported by key types of clients: geographical area (residence of respondents), income group, age group, sex of respondent and household composition.
A multi-service survey sample is available at URI office in Tirana for those with interest in the subject.
Component II: Tirana Municipal Capacity Building
Implementation of this project comes at a time when the first phase, the Report Card Survey was almost finished.
Specific Objective of Capacity Building was to set up and assist with training the staff of the Information Center at Tirana Municipality and to improve the capacity of the municipality of Tirana to communicate and be more accountable to their citizenry on local government service delivery.
Work and related activities at the Information Center included preparation and delivery of 14 modules, covering topics such as
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Public Service Delivery standards
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Costumer oriented services
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Communication with clients
There are produced several forms to provide citizens with information or requests for services, as you can easily track them at Tirana Municipality web page.
Information prepared and delivered at this Information office consists in:
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Leaflets with general information on the structure and functions of the municipality; municipal council tasks and responsibilities; municipal service and timetable of their activity and citizens reception;
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Information pages on the tasks and responsibilities for each on of the municipal sectors; basic rules of construction, what is required to apply for a permit, criteria for benefiting social assistance; local taxes and other service payments due to the municipality etc.
All this information will be available soon online at Tirana Municipality WebSite.
While receiving and recording citizen complaints in a separate proper environment within an organized municipal structure as the Information Center is improving communication with citizens, as part of the Citizen Report Cards system. To register the complaint, citizens at Tirana Information Center fill an application form which is printed and one copy is sent to the responsible employee. This information is given to the Mayor and Municipality Council to assure that the municipality staff is accomplishing its duty looking after citizens needs. Despite this, information on the number and type of the citizen complaint is used to monitor the service performance, and this is something already considered in the new budget allocation that Tirana Municipality has to prepare for year 2004, or for the coming years.
For the obvious reasons that one information Center cannot serve to ALL city needs, and taking into consideration the problems with public transportation, which does not cover the whole city, three other information offices were set up in years 2004-2005, that will better serve their citizens, based on the capacities and experiences already created with the big Tirana Information Office, always assisted by URI&NACSS.
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