About us

The National Academy of Public Administration is the central institution of the system of professional development in public administration of the Republic of Serbia, with the status of officially recognised organiser of informal adult educational activities. It was founded in accordance with the Law on the National Academy of Public Administration (″Official Gazette of the RS“, No 94/2017 as of 19th October 2017) and it started working in January 2018.

By implementing the training programme, and along with using modern forms and methods of work on professional devlopment, the Academy improves the competencies of employees working in public administration, required for good quality of business as usual. This ensures constant improvement of quality of the services provided by public administration to the citizens and business subjects.

Continuous professional development ensures that every employee is always capable of meeting the needs of the citizens and appropriately, efficiently and economically implement regulations without any discrimination and in a standardised manner. Professionalisation and depolitisation of administration are the key reform principles, by which the Academy gives significant contribution by developing and conducting modern training programmes as well as by monitoring the achieved results.

The National Academy of Public Administration follows modern tendencies in HR management with its activities and meets the challenges in the processes of public administration professionalisation. Believing that we can achieve our goals only in a systematic and well planned manner, our activities are genrally directed toward the following:

• identifying the training needs, according to which priority fields are precisely identifies as well as the target groups of civil servants to whom the professional development is intended,
• planning and programming general professional development which additionally operationalises content-based, methodological and financial aspects of planned training,
• organisation and realisation with the objective of comprehensive and detailed preparation and realisation of the professional development programme by the accredited programme implementors,
• evaluation , the analysis of which provides us with feedback information on the quality of various aspects of realised training courses and their influence on business as usual of civil servants, and
• reporting, due to which the effects of work become measurable and information transparent and available to the general public.

The Academy cooperates with all bodies and organisations of public administration, via designated representatives or organisational units competent for HR management, as well as with a wide range of reprentatives of professional and academic community, non-governmental organisations and professional associations. This way we ensure that our activities are based on truly determined needs of civil servants and citizens who are users of public services as well as on the achievements of modern practice of professional development and HR management.

Sectors

According to the Rulebook on internal organisation and systematisation of job positions in the National Academy of Public Administration, the following basic internal units are established:

• Sector for training and quality management programmes preparation
• Sector for training programme implementation
• Sector for international cooperation and projects
• Sector for financial, general and IT activities

Director

Photo: CorD magazine

Dražen Maravić was born in 1975 in Subotica, where he finished primary school and the Gymnasium. He grauated from the Faculty of Law at the University of Novi Sad, and is currently on his PhD studies at the Faculty of Law at the Union University in Belgrade. He also graduated from the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Serbia and passed the diplomatic and consular law exam. He finished his Specialist studies in Belgrade on the subject of the ″National and global safety“. He completed multiple training courses within his professional development and obtained certificates in the fields of management, change management, leadership, performance management and result-based management. He finished training courses on many subjects in the field of European integrations organised by the Academy of European Law in Trier, the College of Europe in Bruges and the European Integration Office of the Government of the RS. For his academic achievements he was awarded with scholarships of the Kingdom of Norway and the German Konrad Adenauer Foundation. He is a certified trainer for management by the Chartered Management Institute Ukfor the levels 5 and 7. Due to the achieved results, he was awarded in 2005 with a scholarship of the Government of Great Britain, Chevening Fellowship, for the training programme in the field of tackling international organised crime which was successfully finished in May 2006.

Dražen Maravić has been a civil servant throughout his career, with many years of experience in the District Court in Subotica, Provincial Secretariat for Sports and Youth of the AP of Vojvodina, Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations, Ministry of Interior and Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government.
On behalf of the Government of the RS, he conducted negotiations with the EU which were successfully finished in December 2009 by cancelling the visa regime for our citizens, as well as with previous signing of the Agreement on Visa Facilitation, Readmission and Strategic Cooperation with the EUROPOL. He initiated and implemented several reform projects at the Ministry of Interior of the RS due to which the OSCE Mission to Serbia named him the Person on the Year 2012, for his contribution to the MoI reform. He conducted dozens of negotiations on police cooperation which were successfully completed by signing the agreements with a number of European countries, including the multilateral Convention on Police Cooperation in the South-East Europe. He managed the drafting and implementation of the first MoI Development Strategy of the RS 2011-2016. For the accomplished results, he was exceptionally rewarded in 2011 on the occasion of celebrating 200 years of work of the MoI.

As the state secretary and the assistant minister at the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government, he was responsible for conducting the public administration reform, reform of the HR management system, forming the central training institution, operation of the coordination bodies of the Government of the Republic of Serbia responsible for coordination of work with inspection services, as well as for harmonising the required administrative procedures with the Law on General Administrative Procedures, introducing the integrated administrative unit, etc.