After today's handover, Minister Boštjan Koritnik took office at the Ministry of Public Administration.

Ministry of public administration has been proud to be part of the (European Security Certification Framework) EU-SEC project for the last three years. The main aim of EU-SEC is to improve trust in cloud services by creating a framework under which existing certification and assurance approaches can co-exist. The framework serves basic requirements of the EU Cybersecurity Act and adds an additional layer of trust, assurance and transparency by including continuous auditing-based certifications. It is targeted at cloud stakeholders wishing to improve the business value, efficiency and effectiveness of their approach to cloud security approach to cloud security and privacy compliance. This includes auditors, cloud service providers, regulators, standard owners and cloud users.

The Minister of Public Administration Rudi Medved attended the fifth meeting of the Slovenian and Serbian Governments held on 17 December 2019. The visit of the Slovenian Government is a continuation of regular and intensive high-level political dialogue and a continuation of the practice of joint meetings between the two governments. Today's meeting in Novi Sad, which is the fifth such meeting, showed that relations between the two countries have been strengthening in all areas.

"Slovenia wants to be an active partner in Serbia's path to the European Union. For Slovenia, Serbia is an extremely important economic partner in the region. We want to help it tackle the greatest challenges of rural development by offering our knowledge and examples of good practices," said the Prime Minister of the of the Republic of Slovenia, Marjan Šarec, at today's press conference following the meeting of the Governments of the Republic of Slovenia and the Republic of Serbia in Novi Sad.

The Minister of Public Administration, Rudi Medved, attended the meeting of the Transport, Telecommunications and Energy Council of the EU (TTE Council), which was held on Tuesday, 3 December 2019, in Brussels.

Today, 28 November 2019, a seminar on joint municipal administrations in Bavaria and Slovenia is being held at the Ministry of Public Administration. The seminar was organised by the Ministry in collaboration with the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior on the basis of the programme adopted by the Permanent Slovenian-Bavarian Commission the previous year. The local self-government has been part of the Commission's programme since 1995.

Today and tomorrow, 28 and 29 November 2019, Director-General of the Public Sector Directorate at the Ministry of Public Administration Peter Pogačar and his delegation are attending the EUPAN Directors General meeting.

On 26 and 27 November 2019, the Public Sector Inspectorate of the Ministry of Public Administration is hosting colleagues from the Administrative Inspection of the Montenegrin Ministry of Public Administration.

The meeting of the World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-19) in Sharm el-Sheikh, were the widest possible global radiocommunication strategy is considered, is coming to an end.

In November, the training as part of the preparations for the Slovenian Presidency of the Council of the EU in 2021 started and will be carried out until the spring of 2021. The preparation and implementation of the training programme is led by the Administration Academy of the Ministry of Public Administration.

The World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-19) is currently meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, considering the widest possible global radiocommunication strategy.

A special workshop on human resources management was held today as a result of collaboration between the Ministry of Public Administration and the Observatory for Public Sector Innovation (within the OECD). The focus of the workshop was on the current challenges related to the ageing of the working population and the lack of competent staff, i.e. age management and talent management.

This week, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is on the third mission to Ljubljana with the aim of co-creating systemic solutions for the public procurement process. The mission started yesterday, on 19 November 2019, with promising news, as according to the recently published OECD Government at a Glance report Slovenia ranks among the most developed OECD member countries in terms of the transparency of public procurement process and publicly available information. In Slovenia, information on the procedure, evaluation criteria, selection criteria and related documents are transparent and publicly available.

In its publication Government at a Glance for 2019 the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) placed Slovenia in the very top in terms of the openness of public sector data. Slovenia ranks 10th in the world and 5th in the EU, immediately after France, Ireland, Spain and Greece (OURData Index, Table 9.4, p. 151).

In the most recent OECD report, public procurement, which falls under the responsibility of the Ministry of Public Administration, was recognised as a part of the Slovenian public sector that stands out in a positive way compared to other countries.

Talks between particular line ministries and representatives of the European Commission are being held from 13 to 15 November 2019. This is a regular technical mission with an emphasis on the overview of the compliance with country-specific recommendations. It will also cover topics envisaged in the chapters of the Country Report.

In the previous week, an event within the international BACID programme intended to improve administrative capacities of the Western Balkan countries was held in Vienna, where the European structure of the implementation of the Common Assessment Framework (CAF) model in particular countries was presented to the representatives of Albania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia.

At a special invitation, Director General of the Public Sector Directorate Peter Pogačar is attending the OECD Civil Service Leaders' Roundtable held today at the renowned National Administration School (École nationale d'administration – ENA) in Paris.

On 4 November 2019, Acting Director-General of the Information Society and Informatics Directorate, Miha Krišelj, and a team of specialised staff members attended a meeting in Berlin on the preparations for the presidency of the Telecommunications Council of the EU.

Technical assistance to Montenegro in data management continues. Miro Lozej and Paula Kolenko from the Data Management Division of the Information Society and Informatics Directorate visited Montenegro from 28 to 30 October 2019 to present the experience of the Slovenian Ministry of Public Administration in this area.