The TRAIN Program (Think Tanks providing Research and Advice through Interaction and Networking) encourages policy dialogue, between think tanks and decision-makers in the EU candidate countries and potential candidate countries of the Western Balkans (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo*, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia). The program aims to strengthen the voice of CSOs in the region, their influence on decision-making processes and their visibility and credibility in the process of European integration. The program focuses on the following 4 areas:

1)      Training to build and strengthen existing capacities;

2)      Regional cooperation to exchange of experience and good practices;

3)      Interaction with national political actors to contribute to the policy debates;

4)      Networking with EU actors to increase the visibility on the Brussels stage.

The TRAIN Program is supported by the Federal Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany and is implemented by the German Council on Foreign (DGAP), Berlin.

The TRAIN Program 2017 includes 12 trainees and participants from various think tanks from the Western Balkans region. This year's TRAIN Program topic is corruption and informal practices in the Western Balkans. This topic includes, among others, the following aspects: eradication of nepotism and clientelism in public administration, adequate functioning of the judiciary system, the efficiency and quality of the education system, and the analysis and evaluation of various anti-corruption strategies.

A member of the BOS Research Team, Sanja Nasevski, is a participant of the TRAIN Program 2017. Within the program, she has carried out a research on the availability of information on the quality of higher education, with a special emphasis on the role of the Commission for Accreditation and Quality Assurance (CAQA) and the process of external quality assurance for which the CAQA is responsible. As a result of this research, a policy brief Quality assurance and open data for ranking in Serbian higher education – we are ready for it was published.