Austria is helping Albania to modernize the administration
For them, everyone is equal before the law, explains Bufi. “Everyone receives the same support from the community,” says the mayor, who was born in Roskovec in 1972. The city with just over 20,000 inhabitants has a modern service center of the agency “ADISA” (Agency for the Delivery of Integrated Services Albania). There, citizens of the city can get all services from passport to land registration. The service center was set up in Roskovec and twelve other municipalities in Albania with funding from Austrian Development Cooperation. A digitization offensive in Albania would like to increasingly offer these services online. However, they can still be used in a total of 13 service centers – supported by competent employees.
For seven years, the Austrian Development Agency (ADA), the agency of Austrian development cooperation, together with the UN Development Program (UNDP), has been supporting public institutions such as those in Roskovec in modernizing public administration and thus also in fighting corruption. Among other things, work is being done to establish common standards for everyone. The Austrian Development Cooperation supported this joint project with UNDP with a total of 1.6 million euros.
The actual staff and some of the staff are provided by the municipalities themselves. The aim is to be able to offer access to services of the same quality and standards across the country. As Bufi told, Roskovec owns around 450,000 olive trees, of which 100,000 trees were registered in 2022 alone.