Strategic Plan for the State Attorney’s Office completed

The USAID Rule of Law Project helped Serbia’s State Attorney’s Office (SAO) reach an important milestone in the overall modernization and capacity building process for the institution. This week, the first ever Strategic Plan for the SAO was finalized. 

In an attempt to find the right answers to key questions – where do they find themselves as an institution at the moment, where do they want to be, and, most importantly, how to achieve the desired level of development, with firm guidance from our project team, the SAO first developed a SWOT analysis back in August last year. On the basis of this, and through two more rounds of internal consultations, the SAO managed to identify strategic priorities for institutional development as well as seven strategic goals. These prioritize improving the position of this institution, streamlining operational procedures to ensure more efficient handling of cases, good quality representation and better planning of the budget and other resources, in addition to improving communication and raising awareness on the importance of the work of the SAO among the broader professional community and the citizens. Adequate measures and concrete activities for operationalizing these goals have been identified as well.

The SAO now has a comprehensive strategic framework which is the result of team efforts and open dialogue among colleagues and clearly outlines both mid and long-term initiatives for future institutional development. The Rule of Law Project is already providing significant technical assistance with business process streamlining, translating optimized operational procedures into upgrades for the SAO’s case management system, and rolling these out across the board, to 11 regional units which are currently all paper-based, and providing continuous professional capacity building for SAO staff through training.