How much public information can a young person find about the Municipality of Tetovo?
When discussing municipal transparency, the issue is not merely whether information is published. It is also a matter of how easily that information can be found, how complete it is, and whether citizens can actually understand and utilize it.
This is particularly important for young people. Municipal decisions directly impact daily life, ranging from roads, transport, and public spaces to education, sports, culture, the environment, urban planning, and the allocation of public funds.
Yet, if a young person wants to know the budget planned for a specific activity, the decisions made by the Municipal Council, the recipient of a public contract, or the procedure for requesting a specific document, how easy is it for them to find the answer?
What is publicly available on the Municipality of Tetovo’s website?
A significant amount of official information is available on the Municipality of Tetovo’s website. The official site features documents and sections related to the budget, acts and decisions, electronic services, public participation in decision-making, and information of a public nature.
The municipality also maintains a dedicated page for public information, where citizens can find the procedure for requesting information, the request form, the appeal form, and contact details for the responsible officials. Additionally, the municipality specifies that requests for access to information may be submitted by mail or via official email.
This means that citizens are not limited solely to the information the municipality has proactively published. If specific public information is not available online, there is a mechanism to request it officially.
The budget: how much funding is there, and what is it spent on?
The budget is one of the most important documents for understanding a municipality’s priorities.
Decisions regarding the budget and its implementation can be found in the official documents of the Municipality of Tetovo. For instance, the Decision on the Execution of the Municipality of Tetovo’s Budget for 2025 has been published in the Municipality’s Official Gazette and outlines the procedures for budget execution. The document also clarifies that the budget comprises the core budget, self-financing activities, subsidies, loans, and donations.
However, budget transparency entails more than just publishing a single document.
It is important for citizens to be able to answer questions such as:
- How much funding is planned?
- How much funding has been spent?
- What has the money been spent on?
- Which projects have been implemented?
- How much was spent on a specific project?
- Was what was planned actually implemented?
This is precisely where the distinction lies between merely publishing data and ensuring that data is understandable.
What do the latest measurements for Tetovo show?
One of the latest assessments is the Local Self-Government Transparency Index for 2025, prepared by Transparency International–Macedonia.
The study is particularly interesting because it does not merely measure whether a municipality has a website. It employs 91 questions to analyze various aspects of municipal operations: the work of the Council, the budget, citizen relations, access to public information, public procurement, public enterprises and institutions, public debates, and other indicators.
In this assessment, the Municipality of Tetovo scored 43 out of 100 points, while the average score across the eight analyzed municipalities was 52 points.
Tetovo ranked with 43 points, trailing behind Bitola (67), Veles (60), Shtip (55), Strumica (54), Kumanovo (51), and Aerodrom (49), while Ohrid scored 39 points.
According to the study, a major issue is the absence of significant information on municipal websites, which makes it difficult to form a clear picture of how local institutions operate and how public funds are managed.
However, another index rates Tetovo much higher
At first glance, these results might appear contradictory.
The 2025 Active Transparency Index ranks the Municipality of Tetovo at 81.4%, placing it in the “very good” category. In this index, Tetovo holds the 59th spot on the list of assessed institutions.
Why is there such a significant difference between 81.4% and 43 points?
Because these two indices do not measure exactly the same thing.
The Active Transparency Index focuses on the extent to which institutions proactively publish information. In contrast, the Transparency International index employs a broader methodology that encompasses the functioning of the Council, the budget, access to information, public procurement, public institutions, and public debates.
This reveals something important:
A municipality may be relatively effective at publishing information, but that does not automatically mean its entire transparency and accountability process is equally well-developed.
And what about the “openness” of the municipalities?
Another important metric is the 2025 Openness Index, produced by the Metamorphosis Foundation and the Rural Coalition.
This index views transparency as more than just the publication of documents; it analyzes four components: transparency, accessibility, the manner of citizen consultation, and readiness to improve integrity and operational efficiency.
In 2025, the average openness of the country’s municipalities rose from 37% in 2024 to 40%.
However, researchers still consider this a low level of local government openness. In this study, municipalities in the Eastern Region achieved the best results, while the Polog Region showed the lowest level of openness.
This makes the issue of transparency in Tetovo particularly interesting, given that Tetovo is the largest municipality in the Polog Region and one of the region’s major urban centers.
What information should a citizen request?
For a young person wishing to check what is happening in their municipality, some of the most important information includes:
- The budget and expenditures – the funds planned versus those actually spent.
- Council decisions – what has been decided and regarding which issues.
- Public procurement – what is being purchased with public funds and who is awarded the contracts.
- Municipal projects – which projects are planned, their costs, and their implementation status.
- Public calls – who is eligible to apply for support, subsidies, or municipal programs.
- Public institutions and enterprises – how they operate and the information they publish.
- Citizen participation – opportunities for citizens to take part in debates, consultations, or other decision-making processes.
Is public information always easy to understand?
Not always.
A document might be published online and formally be “public,” yet remain difficult for the average citizen to understand.
A decision spanning dozens of pages, a budget spreadsheet, or a public procurement document may contain crucial information, but that information is not necessarily presented in a format a young person can grasp in a matter of minutes.
That is precisely why access to information and the understanding of that information should be viewed as two related, yet distinct, concepts.
Transparency does not end with publication
Public data is just the starting point.
A more transparent municipality is one where citizens can find information, understand it, and use it to participate in public life.
Results from recent studies show that the Municipality of Tetovo provides accessible public information and formal mechanisms for accessing it; however, there is still room for improvement regarding overall transparency, accountability, and the way information is presented to citizens.
For young people, the challenge goes beyond simply asking, “Is the information online?”
A more important question is:
“Can I find, understand, and use this information to know what is happening in my city?”
This is precisely where transparency transforms into civic participation.
Sources:
- Municipality of Tetovo – Public Information – official information regarding the right of access to information, procedures, and forms.
- Transparency International-Macedonia – Local Transparency Index 2025 – an assessment of transparency across eight municipalities, in which Tetovo scored 43/100.
- Active Transparency Index 2025 – Open Data – Tetovo scored 81.4%.
- Metamorphosis – Openness Index 2025 – an analysis of the openness of all local self-government units in the country.
- Metamorphosis – Local Self-Government Still Far from Genuine Openness – results from the Openness Index 2025 and the national average of 40%.
- Municipality of Tetovo – Decision on the Execution of the 2025 Budget – an official document of the Municipality of Tetovo.
- Municipality of Tetovo – Register of Acts/Documents – includes, among other things, documents related to the budget and the budget calendar.
Author: Angel Stojanovski
This activity is supported by the CIVICUS Digital Democracy Initiative (DDI)