Learning team administrative burdens for citizens Report on national approaches
December 2010
Editors: John Kootstra, Thijs van Welij (Netherlands Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations) Introduction
The subject of administrative burdens reduction is high on the European political agenda. In 2007 the European commission launched an Action Programme on the reduction of administrative burdens for businesses. In addition it is generally agreed that the reduction of (administrative) burdens is an important driver for the development of E-government. An increasing number of countries is also working on the reduction of administrative burdens for citizens. The 49th meeting of the Directors General responsible for Public Administration held in Lisbon, welcomed to work within the European Public Administrations Network by means of horizontal learning teams on issues like administrative burden reduction. Subsequently a learning team was composed, comprising members of the e-government working group, IPSG and country experts not linked to a EUPAN working group. January 2008 the kick off session was organised in The Hague, the Netherlands. Since then meetings have been organised in Helsinki, Paris, Brussels, Oslo, Vienna, Gozo and Madrid. The upcoming meeting will be organised in Utrecht, 3 November 2010. Romania and Poland have indicated to host the meetings in 2011.
The learning team was met with enthusiasm. More than 25 European countries have been participating in the meetings of the Learning Team, and during these meetings, members actively shared their country experiences. The goal of the learning team is formulated as following: - To look into methodologies to benchmark, bench learn and exchange European best practices in the field of reducing administrative burdens for citizens with special focus on high impact administrative burdens. - Exchange experience and gain practical knowledge to measure burdens and to identify possible improvements and actions for simplification.
The aim of the learning team is to get better knowledge of the different methods used in Europe to measure and reduce administrative burdens for citizens. Next to quantitative methods (like SCM) attention has been given to more qualitative methods (i.e. Customer Journey Mapping and Life Events) that indicate the perceived burden of citizens and other methods for identification of possible actions for better, less administrative burdensome services. This has resulted in the publication of manuals of three models (Standard Cost Model for Citizens, Balance Model and Customer Journey Mapping) and other documents, like this report on national approaches.
The idea is not to develop a single methodology but to inform about the different methodologies applied in the countries and their benefits, and when and how to apply them. Some of the members of the Learning Team have started pilot projects on these methodologies some of the results are mentioned in this report. On the other hand, members have also adopted other ideas and best practices from there colleagues. The members of the learning team have gained inspiration from abroad on how to improve service delivery to citizens, and how to identify possible actions for improvements.
This document is the updated version of the report on national approaches which was published in 2008. Not all contributions from the countries are updated, because in some countries the situation has not changed much compared to the situation in 2010. It is clearly indicated when a member has updated its contribution.
2 This report gives an overview of what all countries are doing in the field of AB reductions or related issues. Each participating country has contributed with a short description on the main issues: policy, organisation, measurement and reduction measures, covering questions like: - What is the policy? And what are the objectives? - Which department is leading? Who is politically responsible? What is the size of the team? Is there an independent committee involved? - What kind of methodology is used to measure administrative burdens for citizens? And what services/legislation cause high administrative burden - What measures are taken to decrease the administrative burden? And what are best practices?
Some general conclusions can be drawn from the contributions. All countries have formulated policy in the field of better service delivery. It has become clear that these policies have different headings: administrative burdens reduction, simplification, administrative modernisation, quality management, efficiency and effectivity and e-government.
The approaches are not only about reducing administrative burdens (diminishing information obligations) but often broader about improving service delivery to citizens. An aspect for instance is diminishing distance, by delivering services more directly (physically) to citizens, i.e. one-stop-shops or local and regional centres for service delivery. Sometimes this can already decrease administrative burdens.
The reduction of administrative burdens for citizens is not always a separate policy goal, but often part of a broader programme on reducing burdens of businesses, administration, civil servants, professionals or the tax payer. However, it is clear that there is an increasing amount of attention for the reduction of burdens of citizens and the work of the Learning Team has certainly played an important role in this.
Some countries already have well developed programmes on reducing administrative burdens for some years, including structured measurement, while other countries are in a more early stage of developing such a programme. Another difference is that some countries are already measuring the administrative burdens in a quantitative way (e.g. using SCM) while other countries are working with a more qualitative way of getting insight in the administrative burdens of citizens (e.g. customer journey mapping and in using the concept of Life Events).
In most countries e-government is closely related to administrative burden reduction and the improvement of government services, i.e. delivering information only once, electronic identification, electronic forms, etc. Increasingly, e-government policies are focussed on improving services and processes by sharing data: “the data must circulate, not the citizen”.
The general perception is that quantifications of administrative burdens for citizens and a measurable target (e.g. 25% reduction) are strong political drivers for change. A common information infrastructure is an important foundation. But it is important not to focus at these quantitative figures alone. Citizens should indeed perceive improvements in public service delivery in a broad sense, and that this makes living easier. Therefore approaches in which political objectives and citizen’s perception meet each other are considered to be the most effective.
3 Austria
By Theresia Niedermüller, Michael Kallinger and Elisabeth Schweizer (Updated in 2010)
Policy The Austrian government stated its objective to reduce admin burdens for citizens in its current governmental programme. In April 2009 the council of ministers decided on a comprehensive programme to reduce admin burden for citizens and improve the quality of governmental services.
Organisation The programme is a joint project of the Federal Ministry of Finance and the Federal Chancellery and consists of two elements: the use of the Standard Cost Model (SCM) for the 100 most burdensome information obligations and fast track measures for priority areas such as birth, marriage and death.
Aims Cutting time and costs spent on information obligations: . reducing official channels by fostering the use of e-government solutions . enhancing intra-governmental cooperation . providing one-stop-shop solutions
Improve service quality: . making questionnaires and forms more comprehensible and easier to access, . providing information in a barrier-free way at a central point of interest . developing interactive procedures
Process All federal ministries are taking part in this initiative and are responsible in their field of duties. The Federal Ministry of Finance together with the Federal Chancellery coordinates the initiative and takes care of the comparability of results and compliance to common standards.
The SCM process has been organized in 6 major steps: 1. Preparation: Start 2009 2. Analysis of legal norms, Tender: May - September 2009 3. Interviews: October 2009 –February 2010 4. Extrapolation/Workshops: February – May 2010 5. Defining measures: May - June 2010 6. Implementing measures: starting with fall 2010
The SCM-Model for businesses has been adapted for citizens and includes the analysis of quality aspects. This has been an important insight from other international projects. The analysis of legal norms focused strongly on information obligations with high number of cases, degree of complexity as well as information obligations for specific groups of people i.e. people with special needs.
4 From September 2009 until February 2010 approx. 4,000 interviews for the 100 most burdensome information obligations have been conducted. This was followed by the extrapolation of the results and the analysis of the qualitative questions. It was a key factor to start with the workshops aiming at the identification of tangible reduction measures for citizens directly after the extrapolation of data. With this seamless process the necessary drive to find as many measures as possible has been achieved. The workshops have been completed in May 2010. Thereafter, the ministries started defining potential measures. A list of more than 150 measures was reported to the Council of Ministers on 24 August 2010 which took also a decision on the next steps of the programme. Currently the ministries engage in the process of implementing the proposed measures according to the decision of the Council of Ministers..
Interviews and workshops Pollsters used a standardized questionnaire including qualitative and quantitative questions. The questionnaire structured the completion of an information obligation in several phases (orientation – finding information and necessary forms, completion of forms, transmission). The phase model helps the interviewee to remember the necessary steps to fulfill an information obligation. Furthermore the interviewees were asked to identify the most annoying phase by allocating 10 points. This approach gave an indication which phases beares simplification potential and gives room for improvement of service quality.
From September 2009 until February 2010 approx. 4,000, mostly face-to-face interviews have been conducted. The involved authorities supported the process and helped to find the necessary number of interviewees. However, the communication with such a big number of involved parties is demanding and needs to be well prepared.
The workshops started in March 2010 and were organized by consultants. They were responsible to prepare the data obtained by the interviews for the workshops in order to give starting points for discussion. Participants of the workshops were legal experts from the ministries, civil servants from enforcement agencies, stakeholders. In a first round of workshops as many measures as possible were identified irrespective of implementation obstacles. In a second round of workshops this first list was cut to tangible and realisable measures.
Results and potentials The 100 most burdensome information obligations for citizens cause: . 22 Mio requests, solicitations, petitions and declarations per year . this equals 32.3 Mio hours total burden for all Austrian citizens, consisting of: o 4 Mio hours for obtaining information o 18.8 Mio hours for processing o 9.5 Mio hours for arriving at the local authority . 113 Mio EUR out-of-pocket-expenses (copies, fare, etc.)
Results have shown that the highest potential for reducing admin burden for citizens can be seen in the following areas: . providing more comprehensible information
5 . improving advice and information services . simplifying legal norms . enhancing data transfer between authorities . improving forms and questionnaires . developing interactive procedures . offering one-stop-shops . advancing e-government solutions
Quantitative aspects The following chart indicates the spreading of the admin burden for citizens induces by information obligations for each ministry.
Labour, Transport, Social Economy, Education, Science Innovation Defence & Finance Affairs & Health Interior Family & Arts & & Total Ministry of & Sports Consumer Youth Culture Research Technology Protection
Total amount questionnaires 576 1.182 256 646 494 461 63 94 60 3.832
Total amount cases p.a. 5 Mio 1,8 Mio 4,8 Mio 2,7 Mio 6 Mio 1,1 Mio 0,02 Mio 0,3 Mio 0,05 Mio 22 Mio
Total processing time in hours 6,2 Mio 2,6 Mio 5,8 Mio 3,3 Mio 2,8 Mio 1,6 Mio 0,05 Mio 0,5 Mio 0,06 Mio 23 Mio
Total transit time in hours 2,6 Mio 1,8 Mio 1,2 Mio 1 Mio 1,7 Mio 1,1 Mio 0,02 Mio 0,2 Mio 0,03 Mio 9,6 Mio
Total time 32,4 spent in hours 8,8 Mio 4,4 Mio 7 Miio 4,3 Mio 4,5 Mio 2,6 Mio 0,07 Mio 0,6 Mio 0,1 Mio Mio
Total cost in Euro 9,3 Mio 8,7 Mio 37,5 Mio 23,7 Mio 26 Mio 6,9 Mio 0,05 Mio 0,8 Mio 0,02 Mio 113 Mio
Burden per ministry:
Mio hours
10,0 8,8 9,0 8,0 6,9 7,0 6,0 5,0 4,5 4,4 4,3 4,0 2,6 3,0 2,0 0,6 1,0 0,1 0,1 0,0 Finance Health Transport, Labour, Social Interior Economy, Education, Defence & Science & Innovation & Affairs & Family & Arts & Culture Sports Research Technology Consumerism Youth
6 Among the most burdensome ministries in terms of the amount of petitions, solicitation (also referred to as cases) and of time are the Ministry of Finance and of Health, due to the fact that they are responsible for information obligations such as the annual tax declaration or in connection with medical treatment.
Qualitative aspects As already mentioned above, the interviews conducted covered qualitative aspects, too. Citizens were asked about their satisfaction with public services using a scale ranging from 1 = very satisfactory to 10 = dissatisfactory. Summing up, satisfaction with the 20 most burdensome information obligations ranges between 3 and 4. But it also has to be kept in mind that there is a relatively high variance within the different information obligations as they vary in complexity and target group. In general, information obtained via face-to-face contact (3.05) or the organisation of service provided at the authority (3.20) have a better ranking than information obtained by using electronic ways of communication or by telephone.
Satisfaction Total Satisfaction with information obtained via telephone 3,48 Satisfaction with information obtained at the authority 3,05 Satisfaction with information obtained via e-mail 3,93 Satisfaction with information obtained via internet 3,36 Satisfaction with information obtained by post 3,22 Comprehensibility of forms 3,24 Satisfaction with services provided at the authority 3,20 Satisfaction with service-orientation of employees 3,01
Measures By August 2010 the Council of Ministers approved a list of 150 measures in order to reduce administrative burden for citizens. Here you can find some examples of the concrete and tangible measures elaborated by the ministries:
. Federal Chancellery Offering e-Government for citizens by using the mobile phone as an electronic identification for the Internet
. Ministry of the Interior Establishing a central register for birth, marriage and death declarations -> no need to bring documents for other procedures, i.e. birth certificate
. Ministry of Finance Increasing usability of FinanceOnline – better provision of information and procedures
. Ministry of Economy, Family & Youth Simplifying intra-governmental data transfer for family benefits like child care allowance
. Ministry of Defence & Sports
7 Creating an online tool for prospective applicants containing essential information and interactive applications
. Ministry of Health Extending the coverage of the e-card system to all social security procedures (prescriptions, forms, official notifications...)
. Ministry of Transport, Innovation & Technology Simplifying the registration of vehicles via electronic authorization of insurance agents
. Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs & Consumer Protection Simplifying procedures at the interface of Social Affairs, Transport and Finance – often slightly different regulations which cause additional effort for citizens with disabilities
Live Events Birth, Marriage and Death The administrative burdens for the life event birth, marriage and death have been identified during the SCM process by interviewing citizens. . Birth: appr. 267,000 hours, appr. 555,000 € out-of-pocket costs (IO: declaring birth, applying for maternity allowance) . Marriage: appr. 180,000 hours, appr. 1.5 Mio € out-of-pocket costs . Death: appr. 145,000 hours, appr. 380,000 € out-of-pocket costs
There has been significant progress concerning the service delivery around the life event birth. One- stop-shops as well as online solutions made it possible to cut down the necessary interaction with the relevant authority to only one contact.
For the life event marriage it is planned to stop citizens from unnecessarily travelling the country in order to get an excerpt of the birth registry entry. This excerpt is not identical with the birth certificate. The excerpt can only be made by the municipality of one’s birthplace. The solution planned is that the public authority gets this document ex officio.
For the life situation death suggestion to reduce the amount of documents have been developed which should be a relief for family members in such difficult times.
Learning Team The Learning Team is a valuable platform to exchange experiences concerning the implementation of the SCM to measure administrative burden for citizens. Most valuable inputs were found when Austria developed its own SCM for citizens especially when considering combining the purely qualitative SCM with quantitative aspects which has been a fruitful way to do the interviews. Furthermore, the member states presented interesting solutions for measures which might be helpful for further developments as well.
8 Belgium
By Kris Blancke and Dannie Goossens (Updated in 2010)
Policy The programme law of 18 February 1998 on entrepreneurship established a global and structural approach to simplification, and led to the creation of the Administrative Simplification Agency (ASA).
The Order setting it up makes it clear that the ASA’s role is to encourage and co-ordinate simplification initiatives across administrations. The new government that came to power in June 2003 maintained the administrative simplification policy, though it refocused it by defining 12 strategic areas. A major initiative was the launch of the Kafka website in December 2003 to serve as a focal point “where citizens, businesses, organisations and civil servants can suggest projects and ideas for cutting red tape”. Over the past few years the federal government has not made any major changes to its policy line, although it has extended the scope of its simplification policy to citizens. The general expectation holds this trend will be consolidated in the upcoming coalition agreement.
Regions and communities have also developed their own agenda in parallel to – and partly in co- operation with – the federal government.
Institutional framework The order which set up the Administrative Simplification Agency located it in the Federal Chancellery with a direct line to the Prime Minister, but also as an agency (not a unit) with substantial autonomy, which helps it to ride the vicissitudes of the political cycle, and to work on long-term projects involving different administrations. The ASA also has strong links with stakeholders through its public-private steering committee although it has no powers to direct or constrain other administrations. It essentially relies on consultation and co-operation with administrations.
The ASA’s tasks are formally defined as: • making proposals for simplification, stimulating and co-ordinating initiatives, carrying out studies; • elaborating and implementing a methodology for measuring administrative costs imposed by regulations on businesses and SMEs; • organising co-operation between the different federal administrations; • elaborating an administrative impact note (the Kafka test); and • organising dialogue on administrative simplification with all levels of authority, representative partners among self-employed and SMEs as well as with European institutions and international organisations.
The ASA has also taken on the following tasks: • providing legal guidance and co-ordination for several e-Government projects (whose technical aspects are dealt with by FEDICT – the federal public service ICT ); • managing the Kafka contact point (which collects suggestions for administrative
9 simplification); and • establishing a dialogue with administrations over simplification projects for citizens.
From the start, the ASA has had a dual purpose, to promote initiatives for simplification at federal level but also to promote cross-government co-operation. Since 2001, Flanders has set up a Regulatory Management Unit to take forward regulatory management as part of its Better Governance Policy, Wallonia has set up the EASI- WAL Commission to implement its Action Plan for administrative simplification and e-Government, and the French Community has also set up a dedicated unit for administrative simplification and e-Government. There has also been a progressive development of networks (and in some cases units) within and across administrations, formal and informal, to liaise with the central units.
More information can be found in the OECD report “Better Regulation in Europe: Belgium” published in 2010.
Measurement and high impact services In 2007 the Administrative Simplification Agency founded a “Measurement Factory” which structurally measures the quantitative impact of simplification projects. Since 2008 this “factory” has systematically been measuring the administrative burden reductions and increases, which arise from new or changed federal regulations, published in the Belgian National Gazette.
ASA applies the Kafka-measurement model, based on the Standard Cost Model. Administrative burdens for citizens and businesses are expressed in Euros to facilitate analysis and comparison. A recent trend is the calculation of the results in decrease of the emission of CO2 as well. (The elimination of a movement to the town hall for the collection of forms or documents for instance, represents on average a saving of around 7 kilometres, which corresponds to a decrease of the emission by 1.142 grams CO2).
The measurement factory published a first report covering the measurements carried out in 2008. At this occasion ASA formulated 5 recommendations, which can further reduce the administrative burdens for citizens and/or enterprises and alleviate irritation. 1. “Don’t use the citizen or the enterprise as a postman between different public services.” 2. “Choose clear and practically applicable rules.” 3. “Break through administrative competence walls.” 4. “Replace administrative burdens with the provision of services.” 5. “Simplify and promote e-government applications.”
The federal government’s Kafka Test – introduced in 2004 - has proved a good starting point for raising awareness of impact assessment and its potential. It has forced officials to consider the impact of their proposals on citizens and businesses with respect to administrative burdens. More practically, it has made a real contribution to the reduction in administrative burdens. Factors for success have included a simple structure based on a short questionnaire, and a gatekeeper role for the Secretariat of the Council of Ministers in the Federal Chancellery, which ensures that tests are included in dossiers sent to the Council of Ministers.
10 The governments of the Walloon Region and the French Community have also adopted the Kafka Test. Other impact assessment procedures, with a broader scope, have also been established by the Flemish government in 2005 and by the federal government in 2007. A variable geometry is at work, with different governments sometimes adopting different versions of the same processes.
Reduction measures Belgium adopted in October 2009 the objective of a 25% reduction (by 2012) in administrative burdens for businesses. So far, there is no quantitative goal set for the citizens target group.
Nevertheless, over a hundred federal administrative simplifications targeting citizens have been realized since the startup of the Kafka-programme in 2003. A vast majority of these was inspired by suggestions and complaints collected through the Kafka contact point.
The methods to carry through tangible and measurable simplifications take all shapes, such as: e-government solutions – and application of the citizens electronic identity card for authentication purposes application of the Only Once principle – which implies public services collect information once only and re-use and share it with other departments shifting the initiative to collect certificates and data from the citizen to the public services removing redundant steps from administrative procedures abrogating obsolete procedures completely
Life events Thus far – at federal level - simplifications were executed relating to life-events as diverse as:
birth living together marriage divorce residence building a house using public transport driving a car employment paying taxes disability illness pension lost documents decease
11 Birth
Not long ago every birth had to be registered at the local government offices in the municipality where the infant was born. As most births nowadays take place in hospitals this involved a journey from the place of residence to this other municipality.
Nowadays certain cities and municipalities offer the possibility to register the birth at the maternity hospital. This is more effective, easy and pleasant for the new mothers and fathers who can now cherish this ceremony together.
(This procedure was revised before the start of the measurement factory. Consequently, there are no exact administrative burden measurements at are disposal.)
Marriage
Until recently, couples had to present a number of documents to the Registry Office in the municipality where they were going to marry: 1. copy of birth certificate 2. proof of identity 3. proof of nationality 4. proof of civil status 5. proof of entry in the population register
This meant that some brides and grooms had to visit three town halls: the one where they were born (document 1), the one where they lived (documents 2-5) and the place where they were getting married (the actual certificate). The amount of paper needed for a marriage certificate or a civil partnership contract has been drastically reduced by making better use of information already known to the authorities. As a result, prospective couples who were born in Belgium or who have the Belgian nationality are no longer required to collect the certificates and copies themselves. The civil servant at the Registry Office will obtain all the information to draw up the marriage certificate or civil partnership contract. This reform came into effect at the start of 2006 In the past, you also paid about 6.50 euro in stamp duty per copy or certificate, and couples on average needed three certificates per person for their marriage certificate. Marriage or living together has not only become simpler but also cheaper. The tax on marrying has thus been abolished. Because citizens no longer need to fetch and present the copies themselves, they no longer have to pay stamp duty. This allows couples to save some 40 euro.
(This procedure was revised before the start of the measurement factory. Consequently, there are no exact administrative burden measurements at are disposal.)
Decease
The Kafka contact point received more than a hundred complaints related to “decease paperwork”. The complex procedure to release blocked bank accounts and the registration of a decease were most often mentioned.
12 Bank accounts of a deceased person are being blocked to protect the heritage. In the absence of a will or marriage contract these could only be cleared if a local magistrate (justice of peace) issued a statutory declaration. This procedure required the presence of 2 witnesses, the payment of 20 Euro and a waiting period of almost 1 month. The new - simplified - procedure transfers the authority to issue certificates without cost to the register office provided the amount does not surpass 50 000 Euro. This represents an administrative burden reduction of 2 064 628 Euro annually.
The registration of a decease required a death certificate which would only be issued if 2 witnesses – of whom 1 relative of the departed – were present. In practice the procedure was often fulfilled by a funeral director or hospital representative in the presence of 1 witness. The new – simplified – procedure allows relatives to appoint a representative – usually the funeral director while the presence of a witness is no longer compulsory. This represents an administrative burden reduction of 1 767 742 annually.
In all these cases the approach is basically very similar. One returns to the purpose of the legislation and defines the risks and the administrative burden involved. Subsequently, new procedures are being devised that constitute a new balance between risk control and administrative burden reduction.
13 Cyprus
By Maria Alexandrou (Updated in 2009)
Policy
The Government of the Cyprus Republic includes the issues of reduction of bureaucracy, improving the quality of services offered to citizens and enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of the public administration in general, amongst its main priorities, in the framework of modernising the public sector. The objectives of the National Plan for modernising the public administration are to develop a new, more result-oriented culture, to fully exploit ICT and to create a more accountable and transparent public administration that places special emphasis on citizens´ needs.
At present, there is no systematic, comprehensive policy/ programme targeted at reducing administrative burden for citizens. Nonetheless, the Government is already taking action towards reducing bureaucracy and improving the quality of services offered to citizens, mainly via the: - Operation of one stop shops/ Citizen Service Centres, the purpose of which is to provide better and easier access to a series of government information and services, from one point of contact/ location. It is noted that five one-stop-shops are currently operating. The operation of at least 2 additional One-stop-shops is planned by the end of 2009. - Dissemination of the Common Assessment Framework (CAF), a tool that has been used in the last years, across Europe, to assist public sector organisations in using quality management techniques to improve their performance and to highlight the importance of process orientation and customer orientation. - Implementation of e-government initiatives, thus making accessible, through the internet, a series of public services to citizens. Examples of services provided on-line include electronic services offered by the Road Transport Department (e.g. renewal of road tax license), Taxisnet services (e.g. for income tax returns), customs clearing services (Theseas: integrated computerised system of the Department of Customs and Excise) and candidate placement services. For more information on the services provided on-line, visit the Cyprus Government portal at http://www.cyprus.gov.cy - Undertaking of studies (Organisation and Methods studies) in Governmental organisations, so as to enhance the administrative capacity, efficiency and effectiveness of the organisations under review. The aim of the studies is to ensure that the right organisational structures and working methods and procedures are in place, and that organisations are in a position, amongst others, to offer high quality services to the public - Introduction of Citizens’ Charters or Citizens’ Guides, which adopt a customer-driven approach aiming at assisting citizens in exercising their rights and improving the organisation’s performance, thus providing high quality services - Development of a National Action Plan (NAP) which calls upon the reform and improvement of the Regulating Frame (RF). The NAP for Better Regulation, which was approved by the Council of Ministers in July 2007, constitutes the base for the determination of a complete national strategy with the aim to develop the RF in the Republic of Cyprus. It is noted that the Council of Ministers has set a national target of reducing administrative burden, by 20%, in national legislation, by 2012.
14 . In October 2008, a pilot project for the reduction of administrative burden in the real estate market and more specifically, for the procedures relating to the planning permission and the building permit, has been successfully completed.
. Subsequently, a tender procedure has been initiated with the aim to reduce administrative burden in all legislation relating to businesses. It is envisaged that the contract will be awarded in 2009.
. The new tender procedure is based on national priority areas, which, among others, cover the following areas: Public Procurement, Company Law, Food Safety, Statistics, Tax Law, Employment – foreign labour.
. With regards to the impact assessment procedure, a simplified mechanism for impact assessment analysis has been adopted, until a full model of Cost-Benefit analysis is applied. A standard questionnaire has been developed, and has to be attached to all Bills/draft Regulations upon their submission to the Attorney General’s Office for legal vetting, and at a later stage, to the Council of Ministers and to the House of Representatives.
Organisation The Minister of Finance is politically responsible for all the above-mentioned initiatives. The leading Departments are the following:
- Better Regulation programme: Ministry of Finance and the Public Administration and Personnel Department, which comes under the Ministry of Finance. A Steering Committee (SC) has been set up (Chairman of the SC: Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Finance, members of the SC: officials from all the Ministries/ Organisations involved).
- One-stop-shops/ CAF/ Citizens´ Charters/ Organisation and Methods Studies: Public Administration and Personnel Department, Ministry of Finance.
- E-government initiatives: Department of Information Technology Services and Public Administration and Personnel Department, Ministry of Finance.
Measurement and reduction measures In measuring citizens´ satisfaction, a citizens´ satisfaction survey was carried out in April 2007, so as to obtain insight into the quality of services provided to citizens by the One-Stop-Shops, and any administrative burdens that may be imposed on citizens. The survey will be repeated in due time. In addition, in the framework of continuous attempts to improve the quality of services offered to citizens and to reduce bureaucracy, most governmental organisations have a system of receiving and examining citizens´ complaints. In many cases, this may also be done on-line.
It is noted that the approved methodology for the measurement of administrative burdens for enterprises is the Standard Cost Model (SCM). However, the SCM is not yet used to measure administrative burdens for citizens. The adoption of the SCM for measuring administrative burdens for citizens will be examined at a later stage.
One of the most notable measures contributing to the reduction of administrative burdens to citizens is the introduction of a network of one-stop-shops/ Citizen Service Centers (CSCs) as from the end of
15 2005. Despite the small geographic distribution of the island, the impact on citizens has been remarkable. In less than 4 years from the operation of the first CSC in Nicosia, the 5 CSCs now operating on the island have offered more than 950,000 services and have received over 600,000 telephone inquiries. At present, the five CSCs operating on the island act as an alternative channel for citizens to deal with the public administration. The CSCs offer more than 64 different services, from a number of governmental organisations. The majority of these services are offered on the spot, due to the fact the right IT systems are in place to support the immediate delivery of services. Examples of such services include issuing of birth certificates, Identity Cards, Driving licenses, road tax licenses, Social Insurance Contributions Records etc. In addition, CSCs receive applications for the issuing of passports, refugee identity cards, registration in the electoral register, grants, allowances, benefits and pensions (e.g. student grant, child allowance, mother allowance, maternity allowance, marriage grant, maternity grant, old age pension, social pension, invalidity pension).
The strategy of the Government of Cyprus towards reducing burden to citizens, envisages the expansion of the CSC network, the continuous incorporation of new services which cause high administrative burden and are in high demand by the public, the establishment of a Contact/ Call Center that will provide another channel for delivery of information and services to citizens and businesses, the establishment of a mobile CSC which will be used to provide eGovernment services to citizens residing in the rural areas, thus reducing geographic exclusion, as well as the systematic expansion of eGovernment services.
16 Czech Republic
By Petr Fejtek (Updated in 2010)
Policy Since 2006, the issue of reduction of red tape in general has been among main government priorities, but there is no systematic or complex policy targeted specifically to citizens at present.
However, a list of approximately 180 particular projects (called “Government Objectives”) was set up in December 2006, of which about 45 deal with the topic and focus on reduction of bureaucracy impinging to citizens. Some of them have a direct effect to reduction of administrative burdens of citizens (simplifying forms, reduction of information obligations), some others cut the red tape indirectly – e. g., inheritance tax and gift tax for most categories of persons were cancelled; so the groups concerned are primarily pleased they need not pay anything in such cases and the secondary effect is that they are no longer obliged to fill in complicated forms and deal with financial offices.
Also, the “Smart Administration Strategy” was adopted, a conception that should lead to an effective public administration and friendly public services. Its priorities include reduction of bureaucracy and administrative burdens. Projects under this Strategy are largely supported from the EU funds.
The new Government, appointed in July 2010, also included the topic of reduction of administrative burdens for citizens among its highlights, as a general aim and specifically in 9 areas (culture, agriculture, energetics, industry, environment, transport, finance, territorial planning and public administration). Thus, implementation of several smaller and medium-size project in this area can be expected. As an example, the intent of the Ministry of Finance to introduce the project of Single Payment Place can be mentioned that should enable citizens to effect all payments in one place or by means of one bank account, using one simple form, instead of separate payments of taxes, fees, customs, health insurance and social insurance.
Organisation The Department for Effective Public Administration in the Ministry of Interior is responsible for the coordination of the agenda and implementation of simplification eGovernment projects, as it was the case in co-ordination of the project dedicated to reduction of administrative burdens for businesses. There is a relatively small team in this Department dealing with the agenda, composed of 3 – 5 people (director, head of unit, policy advisor, administrative advisor, project manager); thus a close co-operation with other experts is essential, e.g. with the members of the groups within EUPAN, with experts from line ministries, with local and regional authorities, with subjects outside public administration (external agencies, consultants, university scholars) etc.
Politically responsible is the Minister of Interior in general and respective ministers in terms of their competences for specific objectives.
17 Measurement and high impact services Regarding methodology, it is necessary to point out that administrative burdens of citizens have not been measured yet, but such intent has been broadly discussed at working ministerial level.
To identify the most burdensome areas, a number of surveys have been implemented among citizens – the one dedicated to legislation is mentioned above, another one called “Dedicate 10 minutes for improving of regulatory environment” gave the citizens the opportunity to specify the most burdening, confusing or controversial regulation, obligation or area (similar to the “Kafka” website introduced by our Belgian colleagues).
According to all the surveys´ results, the following areas have been detected as the ones causing the highest administrative burden – social care, health care, financial and tax administration, general internal administration (personal documents – passports, identity cards, driving licences).
Reduction measures There is no profiled policy concerning measures, however, as mentioned above, a number of particular steps and projects have been implemented.
Probably the most visible project in this category consisted in introduction of the system of one-stop- shops (here called “Czech POINT”, where the word POINT is an abbreviation and means – in Czech – submitting, verifying, informational national terminal) in 2007. In the future, these Czech POINTs should function as a complex communication platform between citizens (or the public in a wider sense) and public administration. At the initial phase, they provide general information concerning public administration and issue abstracts (print-outs) of 4 registers, namely from commercial register, register of entrepreneurs, criminal record and land registry. Their functions are gradually extended (evidence of drivers´ penalties, notification of change of address, register of inhabitants or authorised conversion of documents). The one-stop-shops operate at all municipal and regional offices, libraries, information centres, notaries, Chamber of Commerce’s branches, many post offices and also abroad, mostly at embassies or Czech centres (e. g. in Berlin). Currently, almost 6.400 one-stop-shops are in operation, and more than 4.200.000 print-outs have been provided so far.
For facilitating the communication between citizens and state authorities, so-called Portal of Public Administration was established in 2003 and subsequently many times upgraded (http://portal.gov.cz, also in English). Similarly as in many countries across Europe, this portal plays an important role for citizens in solution of problems in their life situations, as it provides a complex set of information they necessarily need in such a case – legislative texts, address lists, telephone numbers, definitions of terms, detailed description and instructions how to solve life events, which documents they need, which offices they have to address etc. The list of 468 “life situations” is divided by the statute of the person (citizen, foreigner, entrepreneur) and by the field (housing, travelling, family, social security, employment, health etc.); all required data could be obtained by few clicks. The portal also has a transaction section that enables citizens to submit electronic forms and applications directly to some state administration authorities (e. g. to Czech Social Security Administration).
To spare citizens´ time and effort, a motto was marked out stating that “it is the papers and data that must circulate and not the citizen” – it means that data should be shared by state authorities and processes should be simplified so as the citizen could submit only one application at one spot.
18 Information and communication technologies and aforementioned one-stop-shops should be helpful for achieving this goal. Other government objectives aimed at decreasing of administrative burden for citizens involve reduction of the number of information obligations and simplification of forms (mainly in the field of financial and tax administration and social care).
In addition, process modelling of the most important agendas (public services) from the point of view of all 6 components of so-called “Hexagon” was launched in January 2009 (Hexagon is a symbol of effective public administration and comprises 6 vertices entitled CITIZEN, FINANCE, ORGANISATION, LEGISLATION, TECHNOLOGY and OFFICIAL – see addendum 1); the process modelling involves “process maps (models)” showing how burdensome are particular agendas for all subjects of public administration (thus also for citizens); moreover, the process models should ascertain how effective, efficiently and successfully each of the components plays its role in the system of public administration. The results of these process models will be followed by an analysis and subsequent measures focused on improving of the operation, including cutting the red tape for citizens. Process modelling is a substantial part of process management, project of process improvements and process reengineering.
Increasing attention has been also recently paid to development and a wider use of information and communication technologies. Strong support to this area at government level generated another icon symbol called eGON (see addendum 2). This small orange figure should evoke the whole complex of e-government agendas that significantly facilitates reduction of administrative burden for citizens, mainly by connection of central registers, electronic agendas (e-Health, e-Justice, e-Tax, e-Culture etc.), fully functioning contact points of public administration (Czech POINTs) and faultless communication infrastructure.
Pursuing this objective, two legislative proposals have been carried out. The first one is called eGovernment Act (officially Act on Electronic Operations and Authorised Conversion of Documents, adopted on 17th July 2008 as Act No 300/2008 Coll.) that should, inter alia, introduce electronic tools into the main procedure regulations, especially into Administrative Procedure Code and Civil Procedure Code. It entered into force on 1st July 2009 and enables citizens to execute their dealings with offices in an electronic way (by means of data boxes). This Act is supposed to save several billions of Czech Crowns a year (no postal charges) and of course a lot of time.
Secondly, the Act on Basic Registers of Public Administration was approved (on 26 March 2009 as Act. No. 111/2009 Coll., enters into force as from 1st January 2012), which should facilitate an effective interconnection among the register of inhabitants, register of legal and natural persons, register of right and duties and register of addresses, territorial identification and real estates. This will enable state institutions to extract data directly from these registers without requiring them from citizens.
Beside the legislative measures, it is possible to mention that the Ministry of Interior finished a material entitled “Strategy for reduction of excessive regulation and bureaucracy”. This material, among others, contains an action plan setting next steps in the field of cutting red tape for citizens, public administration and non-profit non-governmental organizations. Within this framework, terms of reference for several small and medium-size pilot projects were carried out by the end of 2008, the start of their implementation was however postponed.
19 Life event measures
General Background In general, the Czech Republic has significantly advanced in improving service delivery relating to life events in recent years, especially after the Government committed to involve electronic solutions (or an intensive using of information and communication technologies) into the set of its main priorities and objectives in 2006.
Some of the adopted measures are mentioned above in the text, especially eGovernment Act, the network of one-stop-shops or .the Portal of Public Administration.
There are still certain number of people without internet connection (mainly in small municipalities and remote rural or mountain areas) or without the ability to use ICT in general (elderly or handicapped people); in such cases, they can obtain information and assistance concerning life events at their municipal office (many of them have a special information kiosk in the entrance hall), personally of telephonically, or at a Czech POINT as stated above.
Birth, marriage, death Recently, several surveys have been carried out among citizens with the aim to identify the most burdensome areas. According to their results, cases from the field of social care, health care and financial and tax administration are on the top of the list, while the three important life events in the title are considered to be among the areas with “medium impact”. Although some complicating conditions and requirements have been removed from the respective regulation and ICT are being used more intensively in this field, there is still much to do for improvement.
These three life events are currently handled as follows: a) birth – in first stage, this life event is solved on in co-operation between the hospital of the birth and the respective registry office; the hospital immediately announces the birth of the child to the registry office in its territory, the parents (or at least one of them) afterwards have the duty to come there and confirm the data sent by the hospital (the name of the child, names of the parents, declaration of fatherhood etc.) and they receive the birth certificate; the duty to come to the registry office applies also to the cases when the child is born at home; later on, separate procedures are initiated with the institutions of social care (providing financial support) and health care (health insurance, registration); the situation around birth is considered rather burdensome in the Czech Republic, improvements could consist in simplification of procedures (the duty of the respective authorities to extract data primarily from registers and public sources, avoiding duplicity in providing information, simplification of forms and their electronization, facilitating of approach to employers) and eventually a concentration of at least some services at one spot (Baby points); b) marriage – from the point of view of administrative burden, there are two types of marriages – “simple” and “complex” (with one or more complicating elements); the simple marriage
20 covers cases where a man and a woman, Czech adult nationals, would like to conclude their first wedding in a municipal office in whose territory one of the couple has the permanent residence; this type of marriage is rather smooth and not very burdensome, it is sufficient to submit only a basic amount of documents proving that they are legally capable to conclude the marriage (identity card, birth certificate) and after the ceremony, they receive the marriage certificate; in case of a complex marriage, it is necessary to submit additional documents, fill additional forms, pay additional fees or undergo additional actions; this type consequently becomes rather burdensome; the circumstances qualifying a marriage as complex can be, inter alia: one or both partners are not adults (16 – 18 years), one or both partners are foreigners, they wish to conclude the marriage abroad, in church, in a hospital, in a prison, in a municipal office in whose territory none of the couple has the permanent residence or in an atypical place (e. g. in a castle, in a zoo, on a boat, on a plane, in an air-balloon or in a swimming pool etc.), one of or both partners are divorced, widowers or homeless people etc.; improvements can be identified, similarly to birth cases, in the duty of the respective authorities to extract data primarily from registers and public sources, avoiding duplicity in providing information or simplification of forms and their electronization; c) death – the procedures around this life event can be divided into three phases – in the first one, coming immediately after the decease, the hospital (or a doctor and the police in case of the passing outside hospital) announces the event (with necessary data obtained from the survivors) to the local authority in whose territory it occurred, which afterwards issues the death certificate for the survivors; this phase does not include excessive administrative burden, it is however connected with the imminent trauma felt by the relatives; in the second stage, the survivors have to announce the decease to various institutions and organisations and can ask benefits – this stage requires plenty of time and paperwork to comply with all requirements; the third phase covers the inheritance proceedings – it is initiated by the notary that draw up a list of all the inheritance, undertake necessary procedural steps and decides on the disposal of the inheritance according to the respective title (law, testament, agreement of heirs); this decision has to be approved by the court (what lasts several months) and then the case is put back to the notary for a final execution; this is the most complicated and burdensome stadium, it takes a lot of time, efforts and money; the solutions should be pointed at simplification of proceedings under the second (less complicated forms, requiring only necessary information) and third phase (limiting the court review only to disputable cases).
Identification of the administrative burdens So far, no quantitative measurement of the administrative burdens for citizens has been carried out in the Czech Republic. In 2008, there was intent to realize several small pilot projects in the field of reduction of bureaucracy impinging upon citizens, one of them aimed directly at measurement of the burden in certain sectors. Terms of reference for these projects were carried out; however, due to lack of political support and organisational changes in the Ministry the projects have not been implemented. At the moment (December 2010) few new small and medium-size projects focused on measurement of the AB for citizens are being prepared, as it seems that the support has – in certain degree – increased.
21 Nevertheless, some actions using qualitative approach have taken place, namely, as mentioned above, several surveys among citizens have been realised focused on identifying the most burdensome areas and assessing the degree of satisfaction with legislation and providing public services. For example, the one called “Dedicate 10 minutes for improving of regulatory environment” gave the citizens the opportunity to specify the most burdening, confusing or controversial regulation, obligation or area (similar to the “Kafka” website introduced by our Belgian colleagues). However, none of these surveys was dedicated directly to the three life events in question; there are then no specific results showing the degree of satisfaction or evaluation of the way the connected services are provided.
Achievements and added value of the LT Taking into account the results and outputs achieved by the Learning Team, its activity can be without doubt considered very successful. A new manual for measuring administrative burdens for citizens was adopted, the Report on national approaches on reducing administrative burdens for citizens was developed and the website (www.whatarelief.eu) is being maintained.
Participants could share their experience and obtain new information on different approaches of the other involved states. Country experiences included both qualitative and quantitative methods used for measurement, evaluation and subsequent reduction of administrative burdens for citizens. Both smaller pilots and more complex projects undertaken by participating countries showed possible ways for improvements of the level of service providing, but also pitfalls encountered. Recently, the Learning Team has concentrated on solution of life events, simplification of procedures around them and thus reduction of the burdens citizens must face. This topic could be probably developed in a more detailed way in the future. Some countries also presented their experiences with communication strategy, i. e. how to present this topic to the public, to politics and of course to citizens as the target group of the LT work.
From the point of view of the Czech Republic, the most important output was the possibility to learn about approaches and experiences of other countries, more advanced in this area. We have taken advantage of some model examples to present this topic to our senior officials and to prepare terms of reference for our projects. For this purpose, the methodological guide for measurement of administrative burdens for citizens is also of a great value. The Report on national approaches serves as a very useful source of information and as an inspiration for our future work. We also appreciate very much the opportunity to participate in such a network of experts and the possibility to contact directly the foreign counterpart in case of necessity.
Addendum 1 – Effective public administration – Hexagon
fi n a n c e fi n organisation a n c e organisation legislation citizen
Effective public 22administration official technology Addendum 2 – eGON – symbol of e-Government
23 Denmark By Henrik Rosenberg Seiding (2010)
Policy
As a part of the continuing effort to reduce bureaucracy, the current approach also includes a program targeting administrative burdens for citizens. The specific program – directly translated from Danish called “Reducing the hassle” – was commenced in spring 2010.
The Danish program for better regulation aims to reduce and simplify laws and regulations for three different groups: citizens, companies and public sector employees.
Cutting red tape is a part of “Kvalitetsreformen” (“The Quality Reform”) launched in 2007, which aimed at creating a higher level of quality regarding public service. In 2009, the effort to reduce bureaucracy led to a plan – “Mere tid til Velfærd” (“More time for welfare”) - to reduce bureaucracy within government. The purpose is to increase time on service development and delivery, and reduce time on administration and control. The effort to reduce bureaucracy within government continues with a follow-up policy “Mere tid til velfærd II” (“More time to welfare 2”), due first half of 2011.
In addition to with the public sector approach, there is a policy to reduce administrative burdens for citizens, called “Væk med bøvlet” (“Reducing the hassle”). The policy aims at removing unnecessary bureaucratic elements, when the average citizen is in contact with the public sector. This could be removing a demand for a physical signature where it is not needed, reducing the complexity of rules or lessening the demands for documentation and information. The objective is to make it easier to be a Danish citizen, with an expected spill over effect on administration.
An overall ambition with the “Væk med Bøvlet” program is to introduce a more risk based focus in the public sectors inspections and controls aimed at the citizens and a focus on triviality limits.
Organisation
The program to reduce bureaucracy is coordinated by the Ministry of Finance, specifically a team within the division for Quality, De-bureaucratization and Leadership. The team is one head of division and 5-6 staff. The program is run by a steering committee of deputy permanent secretaries from the Ministry of Finance and other relevant ministries.
The steering committee is responsible for ongoing implementation of the program and the overall budget for the program for better regulation. The steering committee presents findings and proposals for solutions to the Economic Committee (Ministers of Finance, Economy and Business Affairs, Culture and Taxation, plus other ministers when relevant) of the Cabinet, who are political responsible. Referring to the steering committee is a working group, who prepares input for the steering committee and in addition to the involved ministries includes Local Government Denmark (KL), a number of municipalities and other relevant partners.
The budget for the “Reducing hassle” policy is approximately 2 mio. DKK (300.000 €), which is used on consultants collecting data, conducting surveys and analyses.
24 On top of this comes the time spend in the division at the Ministry of Finance and the considerable amount of work done by the relevant ministries.
Measurement and high impact services
There is a wide range of methods used to get insight into the administrative burdens of citizens – and the burdens for the public sector in connection with that:
Survey – 2.000 citizens has been asked about their interaction with the public sector. The survey was focused on different life events, which was selected based on different criteria (for example age). Interviews – There has been interviews with managers and staff of 6 Citizen Service Centres and 2 regional state administrations to qualify the survey results (providing professional knowledge and statistics). Right of challenge provision – the applications for dispensation from laws on a trial basis, concerning the municipalities, has been reviewed for inspiration. Meetings with other ministries relevant for removing administrative burdens for citizens (bringing sector specific knowledge and knowledge from their own “reducing hassle mailbox”).
This has provided more than 100 concrete examples of administrative burdens for citizens. The result is four generic situations which has potential regarding administrative burdens for citizens:
1. Regulation on applications, reporting and documentation. 2. Regulation on personal appearance and physical signatures. 3. Cases where more than one authority is involved. 4. Complex regulation, that is hard to understand.
Specific analyses on each of the above mentioned streams are currently being conducted. It is estimated that the analyses will be concluded within the next 6-9 months thereafter the analyses will form the basis for political decisions.
Reduction measures
To qualify the results so far, there will be a deeper analysis of the four generic situations above. This approach ensures that the solution is aimed at the typical citizen. The four analyses will result in a number of suggestions, which aims at changing or removing a specific regulation or law. These changes will bring about less hassle for citizens.
In conjunction with the above analyses a number of “burden hunter” projects are being conducted. The burden hunter project focus on very specific groups, topics or relations and from there the projects are searching for an understanding of specific improvement possibilities in the specific situations.
Life event measures
The Danish public sector has for quite some years presented it self towards the citizens through the portal www.borger.dk. The portal is oriented around life events and delivers digital services in most of the events. The portal is the single entry to knowledge and services at the state level and on the local level.
25 The citizens value the portal rather high. The number of hits is steadily increasing and the number of services used on the portal is increasing as well. The portal is through a common security solution (with digital signatures) connected with the back office databases – which on a number of services gives the possibility to actually deliver “proper” digital services to the citizens.
Through the work on e-government – through the portal and through a lot of other e-gov projects – a lot of administrative burdens are identified. Those burdens are “carried” from the e-gov work to the work on reducing administrative burdens. Both the e-gov work and the administrative burden work are coordinated by the ministry of finance.
26 Estonia
By Marrti Mandel / Riini Saluri (2008)
Policy In the Coalition Agreement of the Government and in other main programmes there isn’t defined consistent and measurable objective of reducing administrative burdens for citizens. Although the Coalition Agreement aims at development of more user-friendly and accessible public services through IT-solutions and regional service centres, there isn’t unified, clear and coordinated programme behind this.
Organisation There is no central institution which deals with administrative burdens. Issue is divided between different institutions: - Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications– corporate field - Ministry of the Interior – public services - Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Estonia - organizational and functional furthering of the public sector
There is no special working group or independent committee which deals with reduction of administrative burdens for citizens.
A lot of social services have been delegated to the local government level. Capability of different local governments is very different, which means that the level on administrative burdens is also different. Some local governments have even developed their own e-solutions. For example city government of Tallinn started a project "Citizen focused public service in the city of Tallinn – linking services to ID- Card”. Same time some not so wealthy and administratively capable local governments or their public servants have still the view towards public services what should belong to soviet times.
Measurement and high impact services New rules, regulation and laws do not require a qualitative description of the effects of the administrative burden; neither is specific target groups taken into account separately. While the standard cost model has been applied to administrative burdens related to enterprises it has not yet been done in case of citizens.
There are researches which measure administrative burdens for entrepreneurs. Some examples: - Administrative burdens caused by labour agreement legislation. Basis of this legislation derives from soviet period and it puts a lot of administrative burdens on the shoulders of entrepreneurs. 2007 research showed that administration of labour market legislation costs for Estonian entrepreneurs about 10 million EUR p.a. - Administrative burdens caused by value added tax legislation. 2005. Research showed that administration of VAT costs for Estonian entrepreneurs more then 15 millions EUR p.a.
27 Reduction measures The main instrument has been the development of standards of public services e-solutions: - E-Tax authority - All citizens can submit their income tax statement via the web - E-voting – 2007 it was possible to elect the parliament electronically for the first time in the world. - The State Examinations Centre implemented a couple of years ago a system where the pupils can check their State Exam results via web. - Today I Decide (www.tom.ee) – it is web solution for citizens giving ideas for the government or to ask relevant questions. - Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications launched a project called X-Road, a secure web-based data exchange layer, which provides access to the data of state registers through a unified interface.
28 Finland
By Johanna Nurmi and Olli-Pekka Rissanen (updated 2010)
Policy A specific project for reducing administrative burden for citizens does not exist in Finland. Instead there are different approaches including better regulation, one stop shops, central database/shared data, proactive services, e-government, total quality management and structural reforms.
Organisation - Better regulation programme/Ministry of Justice - One-stop-shops/ Ministry of Finance - Central databases (Shared data)/Open Network (Registry Pool) - Proactive services/No single responsibility - e.g. pre-filled tax form/National Board of Taxes - eGovernment/Municipalities and Agencies-> Ministry of Finance - eGovernment, eServices and eDemocracy program (SADe, 2009-2014)/Ministry of Finance
Measurement and high impact services As a general level “health check” of public services the Ministry of Finance publishes an annual service barometer. The barometer includes eight different services: Municipal services studied: - Children’s day care - Primary schools - Public libraries - Doctor’s appointments in health centres - Health centre emergency visits Government services studied: - Sense of security produced by police - Tax office services - Highway maintenance outside cities
For the barometer 2000-5000 citizens are interviewed by telephone.
In year 2010 the previously separate survey on web services has been combined with the service barometer.
The state agencies and municipalities have different approaches to measure their services, including customer satisfaction measurement (customer satisfaction measurement, customer segmentation, citizen complaints, waiting and handling times, life situation analysis etc.).
Reduction measures The state agencies and municipalities are encouraged to implement methods of total quality management (e.g. CAF, Common Assessment Framework) in order to highlight the importance of process orientation and customer orientation. Currently regional quality networks are being
29 established to collect different public sector organisations together to improve their services. One of the motives for this is the shared customers, same people and businesses are customers of both, municipal and state services within one region.
The project to restructure municipalities and services was launched in 2005. The aim of this administrative reform is to create a well functioning and cohesive municipal structure. The service structure must be comprehensive and economically sustainable and must allow a cost-effective use of resources. Framework legislation concerning the reform came into force in Feb 2007 (Act on Restructuring Local Government and Services, in force until the end of 2012). The legislation sets certain obligations to the municipalities they have to perform. The obligations include e.g. that there has to be a population of about 20 000 at least in a municipality or an area (partnership area) that is responsible for primary health care and clearly associated social services. A population of about 50 000 at least is required from a municipality or an area (partnership area) authorized to provide vocational basic education. The municipalities may choose what measures they use when aiming to implement the law. In addition to these structural reforms, in November 2007, Ministry of Finance launched the “Best Service Practices”-project that promotes the modernizing of production of services in municipalities. It also aims to improve productivity and effectiveness and to diffuse the best service practices and innovations.
Based on the 2007 Government Programme the Reform Project for Regional State Administration (ALKU) was launched in the summer of 2007 to make the roles, duties, steering and regional division of all regional state administrative authorities clearer. The reform aimed to enhance the citizen and customer orientation of regional administration as well as to increase efficiency and productivity in its functions. All state provincial offices, employment and economic centres, regional environmental centres, environmental permit agencies, road districts and occupational health and safety districts were phased out and their functions and tasks were reorganized into two new regional state administrative authorities from the beginning of 2010, known as the Regional state administrative agency and the Centre for economic development, transport and the environment. The new administrative structure forms a backdrop for future changes in regional state administration. By bringing together regional development functions and decision-making powers related to resources for these tasks, the reform aims to enhance the role of the regional councils as authorities in developing the regions. Additionally, the forest centres will be functionally realigned into the rest of regional administration.
One stop shops are one main line in developing public administration services in Finland. They have many goals that include increasing productivity and efficiency, but reducing administrative burden is a vital part of work. One stop shops have two way effects on administrative burden; - In a relatively large country with relatively low population density one stop shops cut down customers need to travel; and - Strong administrative sectors can offer their specialized services in one place and cut down customers need to visit several authorities. This includes centralized advice that covers customer’s need for information.
At present, there are approximately 200 one stop shops in Finland, and they are located in about 180 municipalities. Along with municipal services, the key services include police licence services and services of the labour administration, services of register offices, tax administration and the Social Insurance Institution of Finland. In areas with low population density, a wide range of top-quality services is ensured through cooperation between state authorities and municipalities.
30 The aim is to supply every one stop shop with a public access terminal, equipped with a reader of electronic identity cards. Through public access terminals, citizens can easily get information on open vacancies, electronic public services or some other Internet services and use public electronic services. The secretary for citizen services can assists citizens in using the terminal and services.
The new act of Public Administration Joint Services entered into force at 1st April 2007. Legislation was changed pretty thoroughly even that the basic idea of providing public services in co-operation between authorities remained the same.
The new act limits public joint services to state and municipal authorities and SII. Earlier even private firms could have participated in such co-operation. The new act also defines joint services as “assisting customer service” to notify that decision-making cannot be given to other authority. New legislation does not limit co-operation if the authorities take care of their own responsibilities.
One stop shops and joint services are under thorough development. First all existing shops must make some changes to adapt to the new legislation. Most agreements must be renewed until the end of year. At the same time a variety of services given at offices should be widened and in some cases quality checked.
Many authorities are facing serious changes in their structure. Many sectors have to cut down number of authorities and service points. At the same time they must take care of availability of their services. Joint services are one main method to be able to do this. Electronic services are also very helpful in achieving these goals, but they have some limitations that can be bypassed by joint services.
A new eGovernment, eServices and eDemocracy program (SADe, 2009-2014) sets the following priorities for public services: They are available through multiple channels, easily found and supporting the life situations of the citizens or enterprises. Customers see public administration as a coherent entity. The goal is that e-Services will be available for citizens and enterprises in all key areas of service by the end of the year 2013.
Priority is to offer high-quality customer-centric e-services from one or few access points with strong authentication and a single-sing on principle to all customers (citizens and corporations).
The main challenges are getting the customers to use the developed e-services in high volumes, to develop the services with the best possible usability and the modernization of back-end systems at the same time with new e-services development. There are still legal constrains like the limits of data exchange (interoperability).
Under the program there is working group to develop legislation and other methods for better horizontal steering. The biggest challenges are at the area of interoperability.
The SADe program will deal with several essential issues including: Multi-channel public service development Extensiveness - entire public sector in point of view High development degree of eServices Customer orientation Life situation based service entities/categories Minimizing administrative burden Coherent visibility in national portals Development of IT management as a part of public management Improved productivity and profitability
31 Common services for whole public sector Stronger horizontal steering, a development of steering methods Higher interoperability Citizen participation and eDemocracy Utilization and development of public sector IT markets.
The key projects include development of Citizen’s Account, national portals, eService entities and national contact centre for customers.
32 France
By François Beauvais, Elise Chavigny, Céline Pelletier (Updated in 2009)
Policy : Reduction of administrative burdens for citizens is part of a broader program called RGPP: Révision générale des Politiques publiques (General review of public policies) which started in 2007. The President of the Republic and the Governement adopted 374 decision organised in 6 themes: - Adapting the missions of the State to the challenges of the 21st Century - Improving public services for citizens and businesses - Modernizing and simplifying the organisation of the State and its processes - Valuing the work and career of civil servants - Giving a sense of responsibility by promoting a culture of results - Re-establishing the balance of public finances and guaranteeing the good use of every Euro
Organisation: The overall program is coordinated by the Directorate general for state modernisation (DGME) DGME includes 3 departments - INNOVATION department identifies priorities for improving user service by actively listening to individuals, businesses, local authorities and NGOs, as well as collecting and analysing best practices in France and at the international level - INTERNAL CONSULTANCY department helps ministries with large-scale changes by providing expertise on the most formative levers (managing change, optimising organisations, processing, information systems, etc…) - PROJECTS department acts as an incubator for formative projects in the field of simplification, reception and e-governement before handling over the reins to another administration’s management. Innovation department (ca 20 persons) is therefore in charge of identifying the priority areas of reduction of administrative burden, and is organised in 3 “clients oriented” units (individuals unit, citizens unit, local authorities and NGOs unit), and a unit for methodology. The decisions are taken by a committee at inter-ministerial level
Measurement and high impact services The DGME adopted a methodology based on life events and the technique of customer journey mapping. This approach is based on a conviction: listening to clients should be the motor driving the improvement, simplification and modernisation of service delivery.
Clients should be spoken to in terms they themselves use. A life event approach (e.g., I am getting married; I am having a child; I am starting a business) enables us to engage clients using their own logic and to propose concrete situations which correspond to clearly identified administrative procedures.
The DGME has undertaken a study for each client segment (Individuals, Businesses, Local Authorities and Associations) in order to respond to the question: “What are, for clients, the life events for which their relations with the administration are the most complicated?” The level of complexity which the client feels exist permits the DGME to rank its priorities for action.
33 The principal lessons learned from the active listening of “individual” users are following: The administrative procedures which individuals felt to be most complex, were associated with their most painful life events (handicapped, loss of employment, death of a loved-one, searching for housing,…). The most common administrative procedures where felt to be the least complex. However, because of the volume of transactions, the improvement of procedures associated with life events, such as paying taxes, healthcare, vehicle permits and registration and identity papers, remains a priority. The difficulties encountered include: long delays in service, unnecessary and complex procedures and difficulty finding the right person within the administration.
For each life event assigned a high priority, qualitative survey are conducted, using the technique of customer journey mapping, to identify the main causes of dissatisfaction. During 2009, qualitative studies were or will be conducted on these life events: - decease of a relative - being mugged - moving - building a house - retiring
Structured communication with the users about this program (in both ways) is organized though the website “Simplifying together” : http://www.ensemble-simplifions.fr/
Reduction measures: Some simplification measures are already in the process of being implemented - simplifying the request for benefits and allowances for disabled people - declaring the loss and requesting renewal of all personal documents (lost or stolen) in a single operation - simplifying the procedures after the death of a relative.
Life event measures:
Two main types of administrative procedures are involved around the life event of death: providing information to organisations about the deceased and asking benefits for the survivors. Organisations involved are city hall, social benefit agencies, tax administration, social housing agencies, private companies such as bank and insurance. At the moment the administrative burden makes the service experience more difficult, given the trauma felt by the relatives during this period. Citizens feel poorly informed, need to do a duplication of effort (death certificate to deliver to 5 to 12 organisations) and certain procedures are poorly handled by the administration, adding to the pain (eg : having to return the deceased's health card, or to refund some small overdue benefits).
The administrative burdens are identified by active listening to the citizens to identify the sources of dissatisfaction (20 face to face interviews, e-questionnaires answered by over 900 people). Propositions for simplifying have been ranked based on discussions with representatives of citizens' associations, and based on metrics
The main findings/ perceived problems are the multiple efforts that need to be made like to deliver the
34 death certificate to 5 to 12 organisations. Citizens are expected to meet pressing deadlines ( 1 day for certain declarations) while others are required at fixed dates (tax return un may). Citizens are accepting administrative requirements for 3 months , thereafter they wish to be left alone. Some procedures are poorly handled by the administration, adding to the pain (eg : having to return the deceased's health card, or to refund some small overdue benefits)
- The foreseen solutions are:
- The required information will be provided only once to the city hall, and then circulated to other public administration institutions - This procedure will be available online (Third quarter 2010) - Creation of a single window for both public and private service providers - Pilot project with of multi-channel delivery - The survivor will no longer have to return the health card of the deceased.
- What are the learning points?
- Listening to citizens' experiences in a given situation can reveal a wide range of possible areas of improvement. - Starting with citizens expectations is an effective way to convince ministers and ministries to act - The solution can only be found in a solid understanding on how an administration works.
Achievements and added value of the Learning Team:
Biggest achievement of the LT is being able to give a comprehensive overview of the methodologies and priority agenda of RABC among participating countries, together with relevant examples of solutions.
Added value of theis LT for France : inspiration and evidences of working solutions.
35 Germany
By Sebastian Walz (Updated in 2010)
The reduction of administrative burdens for citizens has been part of the Federal Programme for the Reduction of Bureaucracy and Better Regulation since its inception in 2006. The aim is to cut measurably the bureaucracy costs resulting from legislated information obligations and to avoid unnecessary new information obligations.
With the Cabinet decision of January 27, 2010 the German government confirmed the original goals set in 2006 and raised the federal programme to a new level, such as by moving “beyond the SCM” to analyse compliance costs as well. The Cabinet decision reads: „… the Federal Programme for the Reduction of Bureaucracy and Better Regulation of 25 April 2006 is to be further developed and expanded to take into account the total administrative burden federal legislation places on citizens, businesses and public authorities.”
Organization
The Committee of State Secretaries for the Reduction of Bureaucracy, which is chaired by the Federal Government Coordinator (Minister of State at the Federal Chancellery, Mr. Eckhard von Klaeden), steers the Federal Bureaucracy Reduction and Better Regulation Programme. Since mid- 2010 the Coordinator briefs the Cabinet regularly on the programme’s progress.
The National Regulatory Control Council (NRCC) examines the legislated impacts of the governmental actions on bureaucracy costs. It is planned to expand the NRCC mandate to include inter alia the assessment of the plausibility of compliance costs of new legislation on businesses, citizens and public administration.
Measurement
After having finished the measuring of administrative burdens for businesses arising from national and transposed EU and international law, Germany has started measuring the burdens for citizens using a modification of the “standard SCM approach”. That means in particular that burdens are generally expressed in time and not in euros. This includes travelling and waiting time if appearance in person at a public authority is required by federal legislation. In this case default values for particular kinds of municipalities are used. Out-of-pocket costs are analysed – if required by the responsible ministry – by defining the administrative burden (for details see our guide for ex-ante assessments, available on the SCM website).
The ex post measurement began in selected areas with “simple access to…” projects, in co-operation with the Federal States (Länder) and municipalities. Those projects on “child benefits”, “housing benefits” and “student support” helped to identify simplification measures for citizens within each level of government.
The ex ante assessment of administrative burdens on citizens is obligatory as of January 1, 2009, including a review by the NRCC.
36 Due to the expansion of the ex ante process, the burdens for citizens are now completely integrated into the measurement of compliance costs. The process of examining the compliance costs starts with eight priority areas listed in the Cabinet decision of January 27, 2010, some of which directly concern the citizen’s realm: • Specialist officers at establishment level (e.g. waste management officer) • Application for statutory services of people who require care, are chronically ill or suffer from an acute, serious illness • Simplifying the electronic submission of an application for the registration of a business • Planning and building law for infrastructure projects • Application for statutory services of families and single parents • Tax declarations, obligations to provide supporting documents for tax and customs affairs • Application for statutory services of entrepreneurs and small businesses as well as companies facing imminent bankruptcy • Harmonization and shortening of the retention periods and evaluation periods for commercial, tax and social law
Apart from those first assessments of compliance costs, another focus is put on key areas along the human “life cycle” which are of particular concern to citizens (e.g., family, education, working life, housing, social security, private finance and public obligations on citizens like honorary posts). The aim of this approach is to increase the knowledge on the administrative burdens federal legislation places on citizens.
Reduction Measures
Within the eight priority areas, the federal government aims to achieve a reduction by 25 % in average until the end of 2011.
37 Greece
By Nikos Archontas (2010)
Policy Since 2000, the Greek Ministry of the Interior, Decentralisation and E-government has committed itself to delivering better quality services to the citizen and the business through the implementation of strategic plans especially designed, among other things, to simplify burdensome and complex administrative procedures, to reorganize the “front office” delivery of services and to enable the sharing of information between public services.
By the term “simplification of procedures” which is the main prerequisite for the reduction of administrative burdens for the citizen, we mean the systematic and continuous review of legal acts and regulations and the restructuring of administrative practices in accordance with the principles of efficiency, effectiveness and provision of quality services to the society. The main reasons for such a tradition of bureaucratic building up and burdensome procedures, which are no longer valid in today’s “Information Society” were, first, the will of the post-Second World War public sector to ensure the protection of the general economic interest, second, its inability to cross check elements of the financial and civic status of the citizen as well as a tendency not to trust the applicant. For these reasons, the public sector has ended up requiring multiple and different supporting documents in order to process an application of a citizen or to issue a license for a business, thus transferring the burden of the proof to the applicant.
Organisation Although, at present, there is not a systematic and fully-fledged policy for the reduction of the administrative burdens for the citizen as well as the measurement of these burdens, the Directorate for the Simplification of Administrative Procedures and for Productivity of the Ministry of the Interior, Decentralisation and E-government is, in general terms, the leading department for taking initiatives which horizontally and vertically reduce the administrative burdens for the citizen and the business alike. Its role has to do with setting the agenda as well as the priorities and the tools for the simplification, co-signing the Joint Ministerial Acts and supervising the implementation of the undertaken initiatives. Said the above, the respective Directorates of Simplification of Administrative Procedures of the other Ministries may take the initiative as well to simplify vertically procedures of their own competence.
In addition to that, according to the Memorandum of Understanding on Specific Economic Policy Conditionality (May 2010), the Greek government is committed to ensuring full implementation to reduce administrative burden by 20% compared with 2008 level and submit a progress report to the European Commission, by September 2011. As far as the Administrative burdens on business are concerned, up until now three sectors that is Labour issues, Health and Safety of workers, Cohesion Policy have been measured using the
38 Standard Cost Model (SCM). Five sectors more are going to be measured by the end of 2011 -Food Safety, Agricultural Subsidies, Public Procurement, Company Law and Tourism- and accordingly specific simplification proposals will be submitted in order to achieve the aforementioned objective of burden reduction
Measurement and high impact services We currently make no use of a specific methodology to measure the administrative burden for the citizen but rely mainly on empirical data. Such data may include the propositions presented in the reports of the “Quangos” i.e. the Greek Ombusdman, the findings and the results of the Committee which supervises the speedy responsiveness of the public services to the citizens’ queries and applications as well as the findings of the supervision of the nationwide network of the Citizens’ Service Centres (CSCs).
Reduction measures The Greek Ministry of the Interior, Decentralisation and E-government has introduced, in the Greek legal and regulatory framework, a number of tools in order to simplify administrative procedures and cut down on “red tape”. The challenge of the simplification lies on striking a balance between speedier quality services to the society, while at the same time preserving the legality and the role of the state as a regulator.
The tools are mainly the following: 1. The abolition of a procedure if it no longer responds to the need of its legal introduction. 2. The cutting down or abolition of joint competences among Ministries for the issuance of regulatory or other executive acts. 3. The abolition or drastic reduction of the required documents which are necessary for the carrying out of a procedure, when it is viewed these are useless, unnecessary or particularly burdensome. 4. The replacement of a number of required documents for a given procedure by an official written statement of the citizen according to the Law 1599/86, in which the applicant declares that he fulfills the prerequisites. In the past, a citizen had to provide the competent state authority with respective documents as a proof for the fulfillment of such prerequisites. In this respect, the submission of the certificate on the criminal record of the applicant has been replaced with an official written statement in 150 procedures of several Ministries. 5. The shortening of time period in which the competent authority must deliver the service i.e. issue a license or a certificate. 6. The tacit approval of the application if the competent authority does not raise objection within a predetermined time period. 7. The establishment of teleconference for collective and executive decision-making bodies. 8. The fully on line processing of a number of administrative procedures. The procedures which are processed in the above way deal with matters of the Ministry of Finance (income tax, VAT), the Ministry of Agricultural Development and of Food, the General Secretariat of the Consumer, the Greek Chambers of Commerce, the Organisation of Agriculture Funds etc. 9. The further expansion of the services which are provided by the governmental portal ERMIS (Hermes), which is fully operational since 2008. A citizen, after being electronically authenticated, can now apply for 12 administrative products and receive them on line.
39 10. The sharing of supporting documents/certificates between public services, which are required for the processing of an administrative procedure. Thus, the applicant no longer submits these documents/certificates but the public services retrieve them from the competent authorities themselves. Up until now 211 supporting documents of ministries and other public entities covering a wide range of activities can be internally shared, such as life/death certificates, certificates on the criminal record of a citizen, certificates for social security, university degrees etc. The internal sharing of supporting documents can be either obligatory for the public service (that is the case for 29 documents) or can be made after a prior expressed authorization of the applicant (that is the case for the other 182). Consequently, the applicant is no longer asked to provide a number of documents, but the state authority itself is obliged to seek them, instead.
Citizens’ Service Centres (CSCs): A major breakthrough for the citizen-centric delivery of services Greece boasts of a well established nationwide network of 1.077 CSCs –(“front offices”) capable of processing in association with the competent authorities, 1.045 different administrative procedures, the majority of which have to do with citizens’ matters. Each of these procedures does have its own digitised application form which is retrieved from the E-kep data base. These procedures cover a wide range of activities such as life events (birth, marriage, education etc) and civic status, professional qualifications certificates, transportation issues (driver’s licenses, vehicles transfers etc), public health and social security issues (social benefits, free public transportation passes for persons with disabilities), National Tourism vouchers etc.
It is to be stressed that most of these Centres operate from 8 am to 8 pm and on Saturday mornings whereas 1/3 of these are located in remote mountainous areas or in islands. Last but not least, in 2008 over 3,5 million applications have been submitted through the CSCs.
However, our long term efforts are targeted at the transformation of CSCs to Centers of Integrated Administrative Procedures (One -stop shops) in which citizens will be able to complete complex transactions with public sector services with a single contact.
Finally, our operational goal is the capability of round-the-clock access to public services by offering citizens a variety of channels that suit best their individual needs and lifestyles. That is why citizens can now order through a call center “1500”, the ERMIS governmental portal (www.ermis.gov.gr) or the CSC portal (www.kep.gov.gr) 94 certificates and collect them in person from the CSC of their choice.
40 Hungary
By Viktor Horváth (Updated 2010)
Simplification Programme
At present there is no systematically and fully fledged policy for the measurement and reduction of the administrative burden on citizens, however, there are some guidelines and concepts about the topic. Reduction of administrative burdens for citizens is the key aspect of the “Simplification Programme”, which would be launched at the beginning of 2011. This programme will complement the already ongoing work on reducing administrative burdens on businesses. The Simplification Programme contains different subprojects and measures: process simplification, language simplification of legislation, organizational reform.
Principles of implementing the Program reduction of citizens’ administrative burden, which is based upon the elimination of causeless obligations and processes; simple, rather citizen than administrative centered regulation, which fall into processes, unburden to exercise a right, and administration; reduction of implementation’s cost and parallel tasks; making an organizational cadastre, with the connection between institutions; enlargement of electronic administration for the external and internal clients; repeal the outdated laws in order to ensure the legal certainty.
Organization The Ministry of Public Administration and Justice (for citizens) and the Ministry for National Economy (for businesses) will be in charge for the implementation of the aforementioned Programmes.
Project schedule First of all we want to simplify all of the processes having a large effect on citizen’s administration. According to plan it will take 2-2.5 years. The project would develop in the following phases:
1. Preparatory phase: Assessment of cases, producing introduction’s conditions and defining the methodology for the implementation 1.1. Creating a list about the simplifying procedures and making schedule for execution (simplifying maximum 5-10 cases at a time) 1.2. Elaborating the method used in the project 1.3. Simplifying pilot procedures on the basis of methodology above 1.4.Establishing central decision making body, which will monitor the project from the beginning.
2. Implementation of the adopted methodology, simplification of administrative procedures On the basis of the results of the first phase the ministries will be able to simplify the procedures within their competences. Because of the common work, they will be committed to the project and the
41 results will be of high standard and standardized. The ministries will be financially supported, and they will decide about resource utilization (on centralised guideline). Within the ministries working groups will be responsible for the simplification of each procedure. 2.1. Establishing simplification working groups in the ministries
2.2. Simplification of procedures on the basis of the law (through amending pieces of legislation)
3. Setting up a centralized monitoring system Ministry of Public Administration and Justice will be in charge of the implementation. The ministry has to coordinate the work, give practical information and monitor the results. The resource utilization belongs to the tasks of monitoring system, too.
Together with the macro level simplification we plan to measure the administrative burden of the citizens on the basis of SCM (Standard Cost Modell). Also the language simplification is scheduled in time with Simplification Programme. After the macro level simplification we plan to pursue simplification on the institutional level (micro level simplification).
Expected results Reducing the administrative burden by 25% by the end of 2012. The results will be uploaded into the Government’s knowledge portal.
42 Iceland
By Halla-Bjorg Baldursdottir / Guðbjörg Sigurðardóttir (Updated in 2009)
Policy - Information society: In March 2008 the government launched a new policy on the Information Society for 2008 – 2012, called Iceland the e-Nation. The main focus is on electronic services and interoperability with emphasis on user’s needs and requirements. The guiding principle of the policy is User friendly and efficient services – no need to wait your turn. - Laws and regulation: In October 2006 the government launched an initiative in the field of regulatory reform. The main goal is to systematically achieve a simplified, more streamlined legislative and regulatory environment within a three year period. The title of the adopted action plan is Simpler Iceland.
Organisation The Prime Minister’s office is responsible for the project Simpler Iceland and the Policy on the Information Society.
Measurement and high impact services The Prime Minister’s Office, in cooperation with The Association of Local Authorities, is responsible for a regular assessment of public websites, both from central and local governments, called Threats and Merits of Government Websites. The main objective is to get an overview of all services provided electronically and also to increase the government’s awareness on possibilities and opportunities involved in providing electronic services.
Reduction measures In implementing the new Policy on the Information Society the main emphasis is on: - Service. The plan is to offer self-service of high quality at a single location. The services will also be simplified in order to save time and money for the citizens. - Efficiency. The aim is towards a totally integrated public administration – standardisation, coordination, cooperation and security. The aim is also towards a simpler public administration with key issues like online payments, eIDs, e-procurement, coordinated access to national registers etc. Concerning laws and regulations the actions are as follows: - Since 2007, every government bill, when discussed in the cabinet, has been accompanied by a check-list indicating that certain key issues have been addressed. The check-list makes sure that for example the regulators have evaluated the necessity of new rules and whether consultations took place whilst preparing the bill. - In 2007 every ministry made a plan for 2007-2009 that deals with how to introduce simplification measures in the ministry’s areas of responsibility. This was done in order to indicate priorities for regulatory reform and simplification. These plans specify the areas in which simplification and coordination are most urgent, and set forth realistic and measurable goals.
43 Life Event Measures The national portal Island.is (http://www.island.is) is organized around life events. These life events are - Business and industry - Consumer issues - Disabled - Education and society - Family - Finance - Health - Homes and housing - Immigrants - Senior years - Travel and transport - The financial crisis
It is possible to highlight an event that is most important at any time. For example now the emphasis is on the financial crisis. The national portal provides access to comprehensive information on all public services together with access to the most important applications and forms in all categories.
Identifying administrative burden The government has recently introduced the method “Standard Cost Model” to measure administrative burden and find ways to improve services. As a first step in implementing the method, 3 different public sector services were examined: - Application process for a maternity leave at the Childbirth Leave Fund (Responsible agency: Directorate of Labour - Application process for establishing a company (responsible agency: Internal Revenue Directorate) - Application process for retirement pension (Responsible agency: Social Insurance Administration)
These three services were chosen because they are valuable for a large number of citizens. All processes were examined by using The Standard Cost Model and recommendations were made on reducing administrative burden for the citizens and businesses. Recommendations were also given on reducing costs for the agencies by changing the internal processes. The report (in Icelandic) can be found at http://www.ut.is/utgafa//nr/3881.
44 Italy
By Andrea Tardiola (Updated in 2010)
Policy The European Commission has estimated that the administrative costs burdening Italian enterprises amount to 4.6% of GDP. The Italian government considers, therefore, cutting the red tape to reduce the administrative costs is a key factor to free resources to boost businesses’ productivity and competitiveness, without increasing public spending. The Decree-law no. 112/2008, in line with EU level policies, sets a multi-year administrative burdens measurement and reduction programme (“taglia-oneri”) that foresees a number of measures aimed at cost-cutting, structural simplification and administrative processes streamlining to reduce costs and burdens by 25%. The programme is expected to be completed by 2012. The Italian government has adopted, in October, a new simplification agenda including: • the scheduling of the next actions of the measurement and reduction process in areas under the responsibility of the Central Public Administration in view of the aim to reduce the burdens by 25%; • the extension of the standard cost model and the target of cutting burden to region and local authorities (while the standard cost model is adopted into a project funded by European social funds in 4 regions); • the introduction of the principle of proportionality in administrative compliance requirements, in line with the Small Business Act adopted at the European level, for small and medium enterprises (currently more than 4,500,000 units, 4,300,000 of wich have fewer then 9 employees). In Italy, the method for administrative simplification was applied taking into account peculiarities such as the Italian regulatory scenario (e.g., the presence of several government levels with regulatory powers); the structural characteristics of the production system, with a strong presence of small and medium enterprises (4,446,137 units, 88.6% with less than 5 employees); and the role of intermediaries and employers organisations. The Italian government based the mechanism on a method that was determined in line with international best practices which focuses on processes and procedures: • It begins by reconsidering the activity carried out by administrations with regards to the costs of compliance with bureaucracy and the burdens borne by enterprises; • It identifies accordingly the most expensive procedures and outdated, repetitive or excessive bureaucratic burdens to cut or to reduce; • It involves all the stakeholders at all stages of the measurement and reduction process; • It allows verifying the effects of the simplification measures adopted. In the sectors considered so far measurements led to an overall estimated aggregate annual burden of State legislation of approximately EUR 18,8 billion (see Table 1) 1.
1 Two different techniques have been used: expert assessment for businesses with less than 5 employees – i.e. focus groups with businesses, associations, professionals; and direct surveys – over the phone or in person – for businesses with a number of employees between 5 and 249.
45 TABLE 1: ANNUAL AGGREGATED TOTAL COST PER SECTOR PER BUSINESS, IN THOUSANDS OF EUROS Areas Annual admin. burdens Employment relations 9.940.186 Environment 3.409.405 Public procurement 1.213.919 Fire prevention 1.409.515 Privacy 2.190.431 Landmark and cultural assets 621.400 Taxation 2.756.936 Total 21.541.792
Faced with the crisis, the Minister for Public Administration and Innovation has speeded up simplification measures, many of the suggestions and proposals collected through Burocrazia: diamoci un taglio!. In November 2009 the Minister launched this program, an online consultation designed to involve citizens, businesses and their associations in the administrative simplification process. The initiave received about 300 comments within the first 8 months of its launch. Comments are screened by the Office for administrative simplification in the Public Administration Department and are used as a basis for new simplification measures. Feedback is ensured through the regular publication of reports concerning the main results and case studies, for which citizens can follow the process of resolution. Generally, the requests for simplification are related to the users’ need for: • speeding-up and increasing the effectiveness of the digitisation processes; • increasing the de-bureaucratisation of citizens’ daily life and more common practices; • reducing the administrative burdens on businesses; • simplifying the relationship between the administrations and the more vulnerable citizens.
Notably, the bill on simplification and the Charter of Duties of the Public Administration introduces many simplification measures, such as: obtaining building licenses online, creating enterprise digital dossiers, mandatory communications through certified e-mail, the simplification of corporate book keeping, and the extension of the measurement and reduction of administrative burdens to citizens, regions and local authorities and independent authorities. Meanwhile, the anti-corruption bill provides significant measures to reduce the burdens stemming from the filing of documentation in order to submit a tender for public procurement. The newly adopted rules regarding the one stop shop for businesses (Sportello Unico per le Attività Produttive – SUAP) provide for the entire digitisation of licence procedures for business activity.
Organisation The co-ordination of the measuring activities carried out by the Minister for Public Administration and Innovation (Office for Administrative Simplification) with the technical assistance of the ISTAT, together with the “Unit for Simplification and Better Regulation” (Minister for Normative Simplification). The measurement will be conducted by the “MOA Task Force” (Task Force for tne measurement of administrative burdens) set up in 2006 to support the activity of the Minister for Public Administration and Innovation. Note that, in the current legislature: • The Minister for Normative Simplification has the political responsibility and the overall competence for better regulation, and, in particular, for the implementation of the cutting-laws mechanism and for the regulatory reduction of burdens.
46 • The Minister for Public Administration and Innovation has the political responsibility for administrative simplification, measurement and administrative reduction of burdens, technological innovation, the reform and the modernization of public administration.
Measurement and high impact services The Italian government started testing a measurement of administrative burdens on citizens calculated in terms of time and cost. The measurement was made taking into account the costs incurred to comply with legal obligations and the cost related to the exercise of a right (e.g., the request for a grant). The choice of the measurement has fallen on procedures for the issuance of benefits associated with the condition of disability: economic provisions, reductions in access to employment. It is a test case aimed to calibrate the methodology for measuring the burdens on citizens with quantitative and qualitative methods of investigation and it is a sector that can be easily associated to a specific life-event. The most important innovation is the involvement of associations in the activities of burdens’ measuring. The Public Administration Department has completed the evaluation exercise to capture different aspects of the "red tape" burden on citizens in relation to information disclosure requirements taking into account specific elements relevant to the national context (e.g., the analysis of waiting time for the completion of the procedures which assumes a crucial importance). Furthermore, proposals of simplification have been inspired by comments and proposals collected through Burocrazia: diamoci un taglio!, such as: • the introduction of e-payments for all public services; • the obligation that public organisations’ management databases ensure electronic access through agreements with other public entities to eliminate redundant and duplicative certificate requests; • the obligatory use of electronic certified mail for communication within the public administration; • the online provision of information and forms needed for all procedures; • the complete computerize of the relationship between business and public administration.
Reduction measures On the basis of the measurement results (Table 1), each administration has to prepare a specific "burdens reduction plan”. The plans define the organisational, technological and regulatory interventions to achieve the 25% reduction in administrative burdens, the estimated savings associated with them and the monitoring system to be used to give an account of the results periodically. By setting targets and deadlines and drawing a clear framework of accountability, the plans aim to introduce, within the policies of simplification, a results-based logic according to which the success of interventions is proportional to the effective reduction of costs and bureaucratic times for citizens and businesses, and not just to the number of rules adopted or withdrawn. Three plans have been completed so far to achieve reductions in areas relating to fire prevention, labour and welfare, and landscape. To date, the programme has already achieved a cut of 5.5 billion euro, equivalent to 29% of estimated administrative burdens (see Table 2).
47 TABLE 2: BURDENS REDUCTION PLANS AND SAVINGS PER SECTOR FOR SMES, IN EUROS Estimated Annual Savings Areas costs admin. burdens Completed 4.8 billion Employment relations 10 billion All intervention (48%) have been implemented Environment 3.4 billion In progress - 526 million Public procurement 1.2 billion In progress (37%) Completed Fire prevention 1.4 billion - monitoring 166 million Privacy 2.2 billion In progress 27% Landmark Completed 621 million - and cultural assets monitoring Taxation 2.7 billion In progress Total 21.5 billion 5.5 billion
Finally, these specific plans can take advantages of some new measures, aimed at changing the relationship between businesses and public administration and for cutting administrative burdens, were established by the finance bill approved in July 2010 (Law 122/2010). The certified notice of commencement of business (Segnalazione certificata di inizio attività– SCIA) is a certified notice of business establishment, instead of the numerous licences required to date, that will be sufficient to start an activity. A simple communication with attached self-certifications and attestations of qualified technicians will be sufficient as a proof of the qualifications required by the law. The public administration, when verifying the absence of the requirements, can ban within 30 days the continuation of the activity or ask the business to comply with the prescriptions. Thereafter, the Public Administration can intervene only in case of danger of a serious and irreparable damage to the artistic and cultural heritage, the environment, health, public security or national defence. An important innovation for the Italian context is the introduction of the principle of proportionality in administrative compliance requirements, in line with the Small Business Act adopted at European level. Today in Italy it is not required for small and medium enterprises (more than 4.500.000 units, 4.300.000 of whom up to 9 employees) any proportion between administrative compliance requirements and the dimension, the field of activity or the actual need for public interests’ safeguard. The proposal provides for the adoption, within a year, of simplification regulations for small and medium enterprises according to the following criteria: . Proportionality in relation to the dimension, the field of activity and the need for public interests’ safeguard; . Elimination or reduction of unnecessary or un-proportionate procedures; . Digitization; . Extension of self-certification and attestations of qualified technicians and agencies for the enterprises; . Coordination of controls.
Latvia
48 By Jānis Glazkovs (updated 2010)
Policy & organisation On 28th May 2008 the Cabinet of Ministers has adopted national target 25% for reduction of administrative barriers in Latvia until 2013. The target is included in the government Reform Programme „Public Administration Policy Development Guidelines 2008 - 2013 (Better Regulation: Qualitative and Effective Governance)”.
Process of finalization and adoption of the Concept Paper on implementation of the Better Regulation policy in Latvia had been postponed; nevertheless the main principles and actions included in the draft paper are ongoing activities that have been carried out so far in order to implement different tools of Better Regulation.
In the planning period of the European Union Structural Funds for 2007-2013, the support for administrative capacity building has been expanded. Wherewith in the National Strategic Reference Framework 2007-2013 prepared by Latvia, and the operational programme “Human Resources and Employment”, which are the planning documents and determine the priority areas supported by the European Union Structural Funds and main lines of activities, also incorporate a new priority “Administrative Capacity Building” (European Social Fund), which embraces the improvement of action policy planning system, assessment of policy impact, reduction of administrative barriers and simplification of legislative regulation, as well as increasing the quality of public services. The measure "Better Regulation Policy" and its activity "Reduction of Administrative Barriers and Quality Improvement of Public Services" objective is comprises improvement of business environment and reduction of administrative burdens faced by businesses, citizens and non-governmental organisations.
Activities towards identification and reduction measures
In Latvia the annotation system for draft legislative acts has been developed for impact assessment which envisages impact assessment of draft regulations (economics, incl. impact on business environment, social and environmental impact, aspect of administrative procedures). This is regulated by the Cabinet of Ministers Instructions No.19 of 15 December 2009 “The procedure of an (ex-ante) impact assessment of draft regulations”.
A particular attention is being paid to the development and monitoring the implementation of the annual Action Plan on Improvement of the Business Environment, by decreasing the administrative burden on entrepreneurship. For instance, the plan for 2009 included 46 actions in 10 areas: building, real estate, development of insolvency process, employment, tax policy and administration, electronic communications, tourism, forestry etc. It has been decreased administrative burden by making amendments in legislative base for enterprises in the field of public procurements; labour protection;
49 simplified procedure for investigation of accidents at work; several actions taken in the in the field of environmental protection; in the field of food production and circulation.
At the moment The State Chancellary implementing several project cofinaced by European Social Fund: . “ Reduction of Administrative Barriers and Simplification of Administrative procedures” (budget ~ 1.5 milj.EUR). Goal - reduction of administrative barriers for entrepreneurs, NGO’s and society in general accordingly increasing the quality of public services, accessibility as well as improving business environment. Project implementation period until February, 2014. . “Improvement of the System of the Public Services” (budget ~ 1.4 milj.EUR) Goal - improve quality and enhance accessibility of the public services, increase efficiency and reduce administrative burdens. Project implementation period until January, 2013. Main results achieved so far as October 2010: . Functional audit on business inspections has been executed. audit findings and recommendations (75 in total) in the following areas: . Streamlining information exchange among inspection institutions (e-solutions and e- services); . Establishing one-stop-shops for supervision and control in certain economic sectors; . Simplifying compliance requirements and documents (both content and circulation); . Improving efficiency of inspections (e.g. risk assessment-based controls). . Priority studies, research and consequential action (2011): . Functional audit on health and social services inspections ; . Functional audit on document archiving requirements; . Functional audit on national registers and information systems (compatibility, data exchange, consolidation etc.); . functional audit on certification and accreditation system; . Analytical support for evaluation of publicly owned enterprises. . Other activities: . 2011 – 2013 (initial scan on legal requirements in The Commercial Law, as well as NGO’s and associations, simplification of statistical reporting, administrative process in institutions and courts, measurements (SCM) of “baseline” administrative burdens in key economic sectors, opinion polls on evaluation and perception of administrative burdens, methodological guidelines and training on reduction of administrative burdens, conferences etc.); . Impact on budget (plus business and social costs) – will be determined during development of annual plans on measures of reduction of administrative barriers (business and community).
50 Lithuania
By Rasa Liutkeviciene (updated 2010)
Policy
There are two main strategic documents, concerning the issues of better regulation (reduction of administrative burden) in Lithuania, namely, The Strategy for Public Administration Development until 2010 (approved by the Government of the Republic of Lithuania in 2004) and Better Regulation Programme (approved by the Government of the Republic of Lithuania in 2008).
The Strategy for Public Administration Development until 2010 defines strategic tasks for the simplification of decision making procedures, improvement of legal regulation, better quality of public services, promotion of quality management tools in public sector, and improvement of public administration system. Actual measures to achieve these tasks are defined in the Action Plan for the Implementation Measures of the Strategy for Public Administration Development until 2010 for the period of 2007-2010 and are being successfully implemented. Up until May 2009, main strategic objectives and principles of e-Government in Lithuania were described in the Position paper on e- Government, approved by the Government of the Republic of Lithuania in December 2002, and in the Implementation Plan for the e-Government Concept, approved by the Government of the Republic of Lithuania in November 2003 and revised in March 2006. The Strategy for Public Administration Development until 2010 and the Position Paper on e-Government have been consolidated in May 2009. The Action Plan for the Implementation of the Strategy for Public Administration Development until 2010 for the period of 2007-2010 and The Action Plan for the implementation of the Position Paper on E-Government were also consolidated in May 2009 Updated Public Administration strategy and its Action plan with respectively integrated e-Government have common goals and means for a successful public sector reform in Lithuania.
Main strategic objectives on e-Government are laid down in the Strategy of the Public Administration Development until 2010, as follows: to improve the quality and accessibility of the electronic public services and information for citizens and legal entities; to use safe ICT in the public institutions' decision-making process. The goal of the first strategic objective is to provide the highest possible public services according to the sophistication (5th level) model. Attention should be primarily paid to those public services that have an interoperable character, are pan-European and are absolutely necessary to Lithuanian citizens and legal entities. Public services should: be widely used (popular open source technologies should be employed/ exploited; save the users' time and money; be accessible through a variety of channels. The goal of the second strategic objective is to elaborate legal acts and restructure public administration processes. In order to achieve this goal, it is required to use modern ICT in the decision making process inthis way raisingthe quality of public services, to reduce administrative burden and to make the decision making process more effective and transparent. It is of crucial importance to ensure the implementation of the one-stop-shop principle in all public administrations and to develop e-Democracy.
51 Better Regulation Programme, which was adopted implementing the Programme of the Government of Lithuania for 2006–2008, is directly concerned with the better regulation issues, highlighting the importance of the reduction of administrative burden for citizens and business.
The aim of Better Regulation Programme is to ensure continual improvement of legal regulation concerning better business and investment environment, and reduction of administrative burden inthe delivery of public services.
Better Regulation Programme defines tasks, principles and main policies of better regulation, institutional structure for the implementation of this programme, main principles and measures aimed at simplification of administrative procedures for the enterprises and enhancement of the quality of administrative services. The Ministry of Economy is responsible for coordination of the implementation of this programme.
The Action Plan for the implementation of Better Regulation Programme for 2008 was approved and successfully implemented and achieved these aims - created an institutional system for the implementation of a better regulation policy, improved administrative capacities in this field, developed a coherent better regulation policy, improved the quality of legal regulation and its effectiveness, reduced administrative burdens for business andcitizens . The Action Plan for the implementation of Better Regulation Programme for 2009 was approved in May 2009.
Main directions for the reduction of administrative burden are:
- simplification of administrative procedures; - modernization and enhanced efficiency and effectiveness of public administrations; - better delivery of public services by using information technologies and e-government tools; - better quality of public services; - quality management initiatives; - development of e-government.
There are a few other documents, dealing with better regulation policy in Lithuania; namely, measurements on low-making improvement, strategic directions on the reduction of state regulation (approved by the Government in 2006), Information society development strategy (approved by the Government in 2005).
Organisation Institutions working on the matters of the reduction of administrative burden in Lithuania: . Ministry of the Interior is responsible for the issues of the reduction of administrative burden for citizens. Ministry of the Interior coordinates the implementation of the state policy in the area of the delivery of public services to citizens; provides suggestions for the Government on how to improve the process of the delivery of public services ; strongly involved in the preparation of strategic documents for the development of public administration and in preparation of specific instructions defining standards for operation, communication and relations between public administration institutions and individuals. . Ministry of Economy is responsible for the issues of the reduction of administrative burden for business. Ministry of Economy is commissioned by the Government to coordinate the implementation of Better Regulation Programme. The majority of the measures included in the Action
52 plan for the implementation of Better Regulation Programme are considered to be in the sphere of competence of the Ministry of Economy. . The Commission of the Improvement of the State Governance system, established by the Government. One of the tasks of the Commission is to simplify administrative procedures and to reduce bureaucracy. In this area it provides suggestions for the Government on how to simplify the decision-making procedures and improve the quality of public services.
Measurement and high impact services
The Methodology for the measurement of administrative burden for business was adopted by Ministry of Economy in 2006. Based on this methodology, pilot projects of the measurement of administrative burden in country tourism and public feeding sector were implemented. The Methodology for the measurement of administrative burden for citizens has been already drafted and is expected to be adopted by the end of 2010. Currently, a pilot study is being performed in order to identify and measure the scope of administrative burden that citizens have to experience to obtain a passport or another identification document. The Methodology has been prepared by implementing the measure of the Action Plan for the Implementation Measures of the Strategy of the Public Administration Development until 2010 for the period of 2007–2010 („To prepare a draft methodology on Identification? and Evaluation of Administrative Burden for Lithuanian Citizens and other Persons and to submit it to the Government of the Republic of Lithuania“). The principal goal of this measure is to create the means for estimation and evaluation of administrative burden for Lithuanian citizens and other persons. The Ministry of the Interior is responsible for the preparation of this methodology.
Reduction measures
. Ministry of the Interior is highly involved in the field of the reduction of administrative burden for citizens. Ministry of the Interior has prepared an action plan for the Reduction of Administrative Burdens for citizens, which has been approved by the Government of the Republic of Lithuania in 2008. The action plan for the Reduction of Administrative Burdens for citizens defines measures to improve legal regulation in order to simplify the procedures of public services provided to citizens. . Ministry of the Interior has prepared a draft Government Resolution on amending the Government Resolution on Evaluation Methodology of Decision Projects’ Impact. This resolution was approved by the Government of the Republic of Lithuania in 2010. The aim of the measure is to define and evaluate administrative burden for citizens created by legal regulation and to include in the process of evaluation of the impact of a decision the aspect of evaluation of administrative burden for citizens. . . Government and the Commission of the Improvement of the State Governance system pay increasing attention to the implementation of one-stop-shops, the simplification of procedures of the delivery of public services and the quality of public services <...> . Action Plan for the Implementation Measures for the Strategy of the Public administration Development until 2010 for the period of 2007–2010 provides a list of measures which are scheduled to be implemented in the period of 2008-2010 in order to simplify administrative procedures, to improve the quality of public sector delivery, to promote IT usage in the public sector and to promote the delivery of public services by electronic means. Concrete measures are precisely described in the action plan for 2007-2010.
53 . Measures for reduction of administrative burden for business are defined in the Action Plan for the implementation of Better Regulation Programme in 2008 and the Action Plan for the implementation of Better Regulation Programme in 2009. To enumerate a few, to prepare the amendment of the Methodology for the measurement of administrative burdens for business in order to simplify the usage of this methodology; prepare a draft Government Resolution on amending the Government Resolution on Evaluation Methodology of the Impact of Decision Projects’, to define evaluation of legal act’s administrative burdens for business; prepare the list of laws, which should be improved in order to reduce administrative burden for business in the priority fields<…>.
54 Malta
By Marisa Scerri (Updated in 2010)
Policy - As part of its Budget measures to encourage growth and jobs, the Maltese Government embarked on a regulatory reform programme in 2005. Government’s commitment towards better regulation is reflected in its strategic documents including the National Reform Programme 2005- 2008, pre-budget Document ‘A Better Quality of Life: 2006-2010’, other pre-budget documents and budget speeches. - In the initial years, Government’s better regulation approach was focused primarily on, but not limited to, the implementation and monitoring of the An Action Plan for Simplification (APS). A substantial part of the plan was dedicated to citizens. Fifty (50) measures were completed which were anticipated to have an effect on the whole of society, albeit on different levels, as they deal with various aspects of everyday life such as the provision of health, education, business and social security services. For example, legislation was revised to include the mother of the child as one of the persons responsible for the notification of birth. Another example is the revision of the administrative procedures regulating allocation of Malta Government Stocks to the heirs of deceased stockholders in order to render the process timelier and to cut down on administrative costs to the heirs. It is recognised that since the APS was drawn up, as with every plan, certain circumstances and occurrences may have happened which might call for a revisiting of such plan and make certain identified measures no longer valid. Therefore, the APS will be closed off to make way for a new plan. - In October 2008, the Cabinet of Ministers approved a 3-year better regulation strategy for Malta, aimed at providing an integrated and logical approach to better regulation. One of the key thrusts of Malta’s Better Regulation Strategy is to strengthen the better regulation capacity in the public sector, whereby it is envisaged that public sector employees will be trained on Malta’s better regulation principles, better policy making and the Standard Cost Model (SCM). In October and November 2009 a number of public sector employees were trained by the Better Regulation Unit. In the session focusing on the SCM, information was also given on the application of this methodology to the measurement of citizen-oriented administrative burden reductions. It is also to be pointed out that one of Malta’s better regulation principles is “customer-focus” whereby customer is broadly defined to include all citizens. This is a clear sign of the importance given by the Maltese Government to the reduction of administrative burdens for citizens.
Organisation Different players are involved in the reduction of administrative burdens for citizens: - Cabinet Office: Legal Notice Checklist Government has a policy which states that draft subsidiary legislation, when forwarded to the Office of the Prime Minister, has to be accompanied by a basic Impact Assessment referred to as a Legal Notice Checklist. The Legal Notice Checklist covers general aspects, drafting exercise (whether stakeholders were consulted and a RIA was carried out), impact and outcomes. - Office of the Prime Minister, Parliamentary Secretary for Public Dialogue and Information Following the 2008 General Elections, Government appointed a Parliamentary Secretary for Public Dialogue and Information in the Office of the Prime Minister, who is politically championing and leading Malta’s Better Regulation Strategy.
55 - Recently there was a change in Cabinet portfolios. Following this change the better regulation still falls within the portfolio of the previous Parliamentary Secretary within the OPM. However, as a result of this change the Parliamentary Secretary’s portfolio has now been extended to Consumers and Fair Competition. - Office of the Prime Minister, Better Regulation Unit (Management Efficiency Unit) The Better Regulation Unit (BRU) is a central unit, established within the Management Efficiency (MEU) also within the Office of the Prime Minister. The BRU is expected to be strengthened to act as the single central authority on better regulation and to co-ordinate and implement Malta’s Better Regulation Strategy, together with the support of a network of Government departments and agencies. In order to ensure Ministry and entity involvement the BRU works through a network of ministry, departmental and other government entities contact persons. - Ministry for Infrastructure, Transport and Communications The Ministry for Infrastructure, Transport and Communications is responsible for e-Government initiatives. The Ministry facilitates the reduction in administrative burdens by promoting the dissemination of enriched ICT initiatives aimed at promoting a better quality of life as outlined in the Smart Island Strategy. To this effect, Government has appointed the Malta Information Technology Agency (MITA) as the executor of the Smart Island Strategy. Thus MITA is involved in providing systems to Government which ultimately result in better services to citizens. - Here it is to be pointed out that Malta has always been strong in IT solutions and ambitious in its eGovernment programme which contributes towards the better regulation agenda. The citizen can already access all eGovernment services form a single portal, thus allowing a one-stop shop experience. Furthermore, most Ministries, departments and public sector entities have their own websites which contain information about the services they provide, offer online services such as those mentioned above and offer the possibility of viewing and / or downloading forms, documents, publications, guidelines and legislation.
Measurement and high impact services - The ministries, departments and other public sector entities get insight into administrative burdens on citizens through various sources which include the following: o customer care and front offices feedback analysis; o call centres statistical analysis; o freephone services available to the general public; o suggestion boxes on the premises of the entity concerned; o customer surveys; o clients’ workshops; o interviews; o questionnaires sent to households; o meetings with stakeholders and their representatives; o internal brainstorming sessions and management meetings focusing on the monitoring, evaluation and improvement of services / processes; o complaints and suggestions submitted electronically either by email or through the website; o performance assessments; and o risk analysis of the processes involved in the delivery of services. - Malta has also compiled an inventory of forms which are currently being used in the wider public sector with a view of rationalising these forms. Government intends to take this forward in a prioritised manner aiming towards providing all government services, as far as possible, online. - Consultation is a common practice for Ministries, government departments and public sector entities, who work in close collaboration with stakeholders when drafting legislation and policies.
56 The Legal Notice Checklist also looks at the citizen aspect, e.g., gender, burdens, impact on quality of life, consumers, vulnerable groups, social cohesion, etc. - MITA embarked on a new venture of analyzing e-Government User Satisfaction. The online surveys are available from www.mygov.mt/survey and provide an opportunity for citizens and businesses to rate their experience with e-Government. Online users are encouraged to participate in this evaluation exercise as the input from feedback plays an important role in achieving the desired results for a more personalised and ‘user-centric’ e-Government. A survey for those who have never used an e-Government service is also available. - Malta currently does not have a scientific approach to measuring of administrative burdens on citizens although efforts have been taken in a structured and systematic way, as the main focus is on the implementation of measures which reduce the administrative burdens to hasten the pace of implementation. It is believed that by implementing “quick wins”, government entities, businesses and citizens realise the benefits of better regulation. However, Government has identified the SCM as the best model to be adopted by Malta to measure administrative burdens on businesses emanating from national legislation. It is the intention of Government to adopt the SCM as the measurement tool of administrative burdens on citizens. Given that currently there is no scientific instrument in use we are not in a position to determine which services/legislation cause high administrative burden for citizens. - In the meantime, in 2008 the BRU concluded a Twinning Light Project (with the United Kingdom), with the aim of increasing our knowledge on the tools available to measure administrative burdens on businesses and citizens. A Better Regulation Procedures Manual was developed which provides a step by step guide to all users in three different areas of better regulation namely – the principles, the process of simplification and the design of new legislation. The procedures manual includes also an explanation on the use of the SCM and thus promotes the use of such model in the Maltese public administration. - The BRU has been approved European Social Funds with the aim of developing the Maltese Public Sector’s capacity to implement better regulation through dedicated support to line Ministries and the provision of training. The Project consists of three Work Packages. o Work Package 1 is based on the provision of consultancy services to support line Ministries in developing and implementing administrative burden reduction proposals. The tender for this work package is currently being drafted. It is expected that by the end of this contract each Ministry will have its own Ministry Better Regulation Plan. Part of this plan is envisaged to consist of the identification, prioritisation, and implementation (including measurement) of 100 administrative burden reduction proposals in line Ministries. The intention is to aim for a 1:1 ratio between business- and citizen-oriented proposals. o Work Package 2 focuses on the training of public officials in the application of the Better Regulation Procedures Manual mentioned above and the SCM. With these acquired skills the public sector would be in a better position to plan sectoral Better Regulation programmes and initiatives that reduce administrative burden on both businesses and citizens. o Work Package 3 consists of the development and setting of a standard for best-in-class regulators. It is expected that by applying these standards and closing the subsequently identified gaps, the public sector regulatory departments and entities would be in a better position to improve the overall regulatory environment that reduces administrative burden on businesses and citizens.
Reduction measures Various initiatives are being or have been taken by the Maltese Government to decrease the administrative burdens on citizens.
57 - The BRU is working in close collaboration with the Office of the Parliamentary Secretary for Public Dialogue and Information within the Office of the Prime Minister, to bring the Maltese better regulation agenda, from which both citizens and businesses are expected to benefit, forward. Directives - By virtue of the Public Administration Act (CAP497) the Principal Permanent Secretary may issue directives and guidelines aimed at upholding and better realising the public service values. In March 2010 the Principal Permanent Secretary issued two directives which contribute to the reduction of burdens on citizens: o Directive 3 entitled “Elimination of Requirement to produce Civil Status Certificates” is intended to realise the full value of past investments in ICT systems, specifically the Common Database (CDB), by phasing out the requirement for clients to produce civil status certificates where such requirements are still in force. Consequently, government organisations may no longer require people to produce birth, marriage or death certificates in order to apply for a service where the relevant data is held by the Government of Malta. Instead, government organisations are to assume responsibility for obtaining the necessary information directly through the Common Database (CDB) or other means. o Directive 4 entitled “Consolidated Service Quality Standards” aims towards maintaining a consistent level of service delivery across all government front offices by consolidating standards relating to: correspondence; communications; appointments and queues; provision of information and handling of complaints; and service delivery mechanisms. Directive 4 addresses customer’s expectations for prompt and professional service, clear and accurate information, and uniform complaints-handling through the Customer Care System. Directive 4 also recognises the latter technology as the primary electronic vehicle for complaints handling, which warrants a greater level of accountability and redress. In accordance with Stream 5 of Malta’s Smart Island Strategy, Directive 4 encourages full exploitation of shared e-government services, thus striving towards a higher level of seamless service-delivery. Local Councils reform - A reform of the Local Councils was launched by Government. One of the principal aims of such reform is to enable the Local Council to provide the best service and also to ensure the best quality of life to residents living in the locality. Initiatives being undertaken as part of the Local Councils reform include: o extending the opening hours of the Local Councils; o establishment of Administrative Committees for small communities within the localities; o establishment of Regional Committees to harmonise the local enforcement system; and o establishment of a Board of Governance. It is also envisaged that the Local Councils act as a one-stop-shop for the residents and the eGovernment services provided from the Offices of the Local Councils are extended. Malta Environment and Planning Authority (MEPA) reform - Government has embarked upon a reform aimed at making MEPA more consistent in its decisions, more efficient in its operations, more accountable to society and more equipped to enforce its decisions. Government has consulted the interested parties and has listened to the people's voice, the citizen being one of MEPA’s main clients. Initiatives being undertaken as part of the MEPA reform include: o a review of all MEPA policies and circulars with a view to simplify and integrate within one policy compendium; o a revised development application process that ensures clear and shorter timeframes for decisions on planning and environmental permitting applications;
58 o improvements in notification and publicity mechanisms; and o improvements in the consultation process. Use of ICT - A large number of Maltese public services are provided online with the aim of delivering a better and more efficient service and streamlining pubic services. Such services include for example the ordering of birth / marriage / death certificates; submission and payment of income tax return; application for examinations; application for nutrition, smoking cessation and aerobics classes, submission of complaints and queries related to data protection and on-line vehicle license renewal. The e-Government Services Directory provides a comprehensive list of the e-services available as well as a brief description of the services. This list indicates whether access to the service requires an e-ID and/or a digital certificate. It also indicates whether an SMS and/or email notification is available for the chosen e-Government service. - The myAlerts service (www.mygov.mt/alerts) provides a central one-stop functionality for users who wish to receive email and SMS notifications about various public services. The services currently enabled through myAlerts include notifications about children's allowances, passport renewal reminders, the Valletta CVA, Gozo Channel, confirmation for the electronic change of address, public procurement offerings and Enemalta planned power suspensions. - The new Online Customer Care System (www.servizz.gov.mt), which has been considered by the EU as a good practice, builds upon the fundamental processes of the former system whilst enhancing both the front and back end of the system to provide a user-centric based system. The new Customer Care System increases the transparency and accountability for each and every request registered by citizens. This new system allows citizens to request information, give comments, offer suggestions or lodge complaints about public services and local/central government - all through one userfriendly channel. Often, the dilemma for citizens who need to request information or complain about a particular service is lack of time and confusion regarding whom to address a particular enquiry to. Using this new service, citizens can simply send any type of query from the comfort of their home without the need to know where or to whom their request needs to be sent. Furthermore, citizens can review the full history (including the organization and representative handling their case) and status of their request through the same e-government service. - The Malta Financial Services Authority revamped its website (http://mymoneybox.mfsa.com.mt) which allows consumers of financial services to file a complaint online and also the facility of comparing tariffs and charges of a number of financial products and services offered in Malta. Other Initiatives - A number of initiatives were also undertaken by Government entities to improve service delivery in in the Health Sector. o Better delivery of services (e.g. the Government Pharmacy is now also opening in the afternoon, X-Ray Sessions have been extended to the afternoon in the Mosta Health Centre, initiatives to reduce waiting lists, training in Sign Language provided to a Customer Care Official and centralisation of office calls); o Provision of a better service through the use of ICT and data sharing (e.g. immunisations are being registered in a new electronic program which also has the facility to send reminders to parents of children and another program which enables the electronic input of developmental assessments carried out for children which information is available online to health professionals caring for the same children; o Move towards a more proactive, integrated and personalised approach through the opening of a Health Awareness Clinic; o Establishment of a single focal point for medicines entitlement;
59 o Provision of useful information to citizens through the website and to General Practitioners through emails. - Other measures which have been taken by Government entities in other sectors to reduce the administrative burden on citizens include: o harmonisation and reduction of the registration fees for small boats and the exemption of canoes and small non-mechanical open sailing dinghies for personal from such registration, with the aim of promoting water sports; o opening new centres in more central locations and possibly acting as a one-stop-shop for the clients (e.g.a centre offering services to Enemalta Corporation’s2 clients); o extension of the general authorisation process to other radio communications apparatus not previously included; o provision of user friendly and easy step-by-step guideline instructions to victims of crime; o initiative to promote the direct crediting of social security benefits in personal accounts rather than cheque payments to eliminate delays resulting from non-delivery of cheques; o a website with information on the type and quality of courses offered by Tuition Centres; and o embellishment and maintenance of school premises and other related activities to improve school premises. These measures are thought to have contributed to a more citizen-focused approach to better regulation.
Life Events
Notification of Birth, Death and the Issuance of Certificates Thereof Notification of birth and death - The Public Registry is responsible for the receipt of notifications of Births and Deaths, registering these in accordance with Chapter 16 of the Civil Code and the issuance of certificates or Acts relevant to these registrations.
The process for notification is dependent on other entities in addition to the Public Registry, as outlined hereunder: o For births – the Health Authorities who confirm that the birth took place, who the birth mother was - and any other individual who gives independent notice of the event (normally one of the parents). o For deaths – the Health Authorities who confirm the death and causes thereof and the next of kin or any other party who notify the Public Registry of such death with the confirmation issued by the Health Authorities being received through the Police Authorities so as to ensure no foul play is suspected.
The Public Registry receives the above mentioned information from the Health Authorities and / or Police Authorities and processes it in a very short time, normally within three days or less.
Recognising that different entities are involved in the process and that there is room for improvement in the methodology used to communicate information to the Public Registry, work was initiated to develop an electronic system by means of which processes will be streamlined. Currently, work is at an advanced stage on the development of this system which is undergoing a final review and testing prior to deployment. This system synergises the efforts and involvement of all the stakeholders namely the Police and Health Authorities and the Public Registry, and provides a mechanism with
2 Enemalta Corporation is Malta’s electricity generator and distributor.
60 which to collate relevant information and report it to relevant stakeholders where applicable (e.g. in the case of notification of a death to the different branches of the Health sector, to the Electoral Commission and the Social Services authorities, just to name a few). It will also provide online access to facilitate any interaction by the general public that may be required. Consequently, it is envisaged that in the case of birth notification the parent/s will be able to access the system, confirm the details and give a name to the child. In the case of death notification the need for the next of kin to take an active role in the registration process will be eliminated.
Issuance of certificates of birth, marriage and death - Once registered, the issuance of birth, marriage and death certificates is normally carried out on the very same day that a request is received but this is in any case guaranteed to be processed within no more than four working days while clients will be able to submit requests and payment on line through www.certifikati.gov.mt with the relevant certificates being sent by post to reduce the need for requests to be submitted in person.
Positive comments received from the public on the short turn-around time are indicative of an efficient and streamlined process in the issuance of these certificates. Efforts have also been made to reduce the instances where the public is requested copies of these certificates.
To achieve this, the Civil Registry runs a system known as the Common Data Base (CDB). Through this system, Government Departments and Entities may access the same information provided by the extract of births and deaths, thus removing the need for government departments and entities to request the submission of these certificates by the public when seeking to obtain a service from the same Government Departments and Entities.
Application for Marriage Banns
Any person seeking to marry in Malta must apply for the publication of Marriage Banns between 3 months and 6 weeks prior to the date of marriage. The application is to be filled in according to Chapter 255 of the Law of Malta. The Marriage Registry receives applications from couples who want to marry. The applications are processed immediately and the relevant marriage banns issued. The service is significantly efficient in view of the fact that couples indicate a particular date and time for the marriage ceremony to take place, and thus, the Marriage Registry prepares the necessary documents beforehand.
61 The Netherlands
By John Kootstra, Thijs van Welij (Updated in 2010)
Policy Since 2003 there is a specific programme for the reduction of administrative burdens for citizens. The government committed itself to a reduction of the administrative burdens for citizens (and businesses) of 25% in 2007 (compared to the situation of 2002).
After the parliamentary elections of November 2006 a new Cabinet started in March 2007. The programme on the reduction of administrative burdens for citizens continued, but with a different approach. The focus changed to a more qualitative approach. The programme now aims to reduce the top ten of most irritating burdens of citizens, i.e. waiting time for services, understandable language in forms, etc. The objective is to get better public service delivery to citizens with less administrative burdens. By 2011, the Dutch citizens should have a noticeable reduction of their (administrative) burdens and feel that the quality of service delivery of government has improved. The 2007-2011 programme has been closed. In spring 2011, a new programme will be launched.
Organisation The state secretary of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, Ms. Ank Bijleveld is responsible for the programme on reducing administrative burdens for citizens. The programme team consists of about 15 persons and works in three projects: reduction of (administrative) burdens for citizens, reduction of administrative burdens for professionals in the public sector, and the reduction of intergovernmental administrative burdens. A common approach is being used in all three projects, which includes a focus on bottlenecks and the use of typical profiles.). The programme team is supported by the ICRAL; the interdepartmental commission of Coordinators for the reduction of Administrative Burdens for Citizens. Each department has one coordinator which coordinates the reduction programme within their own ministry.
Another important part of the infrastructure is ACTAL, the independent advisory board on Administrative burdens. All new government proposals with possible effects for administrative burdens for businesses or citizens MUST be sent to ACTAL for advice, before it can be sent to the council of ministers. This advice is not binding, but it is very important for the coordinating ministries, as they can use it to give a negative advice to their ministers/ state secretaries.
Measurement and high impact services In 2003 a baseline measurement was executed by using the SCM model. The model, which was originally developed in the Netherlands to measure the administrative burdens of businesses, was adapted so that it could be used to measure the administrative burdens of citizens. During the measurement it became clear that some groups of people have more administrative burdens than other people, like the handicapped and chronically ill, elderly people, volunteers, benefit claimants and cross-border workers. To get a clear picture of their burdens, twelve role models of people were developed with maps which showed the routes through bureaucracy through their perspective.
62 The areas which caused the highest volumes of administrative burdens for citizens were the law on taxes (tax declaration), law on passports (obtaining or renewing your passport) and the traffic law (obtaining and renewing your driving license). The programme of the new Cabinet has a more qualitative approach and focuses on the reduction of the top ten of irritating burdens of the citizens. The following top ten is being addressed: - Quick and Reliable; Individuals and businesses gain insight into the waiting and processing times for government and municipal services and products. Added to which, waiting times are shortened by introducing internet services; - Simple application and justification of social security: simple (electronic) applications and more efficient justification of extraordinary social security benefits; - Submit your personal details only once: all income-related regulations on the personal internet page; - Getting a travel document easily: applying for passports and identity cards at any town hall; - Fewer Permits: avoid delays by converting permits to general legislation, for example chopping down a tree; - User-friendly Forms: simplified forms for change of address notifications, requesting health care services (e.g. transport) and applications for information from the GBA (Gemeenschappelijke Basis Administratie – key register of persons); - More Trust; : Trust people more, for example introduce more subsidies within health and social services that do not need to be justified; - Lending an ear: problem solving with the authorities by (pre)mediation rather than legally through objection- and complaint procedures - Give volunteers more freedom: treat volunteer organisations as groups of individuals instead of as a business, so that organising events can be less complicated; - Quality comes first; citizens rate the quality of government services with at least a seven out of ten;
63 Reduction measures Different measures are being taken to reduce the administrative burdens of citizens: - Reduction proposals which imply a simplification or removal of rules or procedures, i.e. instead only being able to vote in one polling station in the vicinity of your house, it is also possible to vote at all polling stations (so also in the neighbourhood where you work or on train stations) - With the use of general rules or frameworks instead of licenses or permits, the administrative burdens can be reduced (i.e. general rule which state that the trees on a specific list can not be cut without a permit, the rest can be cut without any need for a permit). - With the use of ICT it is possible to reduce the time people have to spend on their administration (i.e. making forms digital and enable the application of services via internet). Several measures comprise like the Digital Client File in the social security domain, prefilled tax forms in the fiscal domain. - An important condition is a common information infrastructure (including access, key registers, uniform numbers, authentication etc) for the different public service providers. This infrastructure enables organisations to exchange data digitally and allows people to provide their information only once. About the development of this infrastructure is regularly reported to Parliament3
Some interesting instruments/best practices for reducing burdens for citizens are: - Complaints office: Citizens can complain on the website about their burdens of the government (www.regeldruk.nl). A small team of people within the programme is responsible for contacting the citizen and for trying to solve the problem; not only for this citizen, but also for other citizens in a comparable situation. Since the beginning of the complaints office, about 60% of the cases have been solved (more than 230 cases). - Use of mediation techniques: research has showed that by using mediation techniques, the number of formalistic and legalistic (written) complaints, objection and appeal procedures can be reduced substantially. The research showed among others that the use of mediation techniques resulted in a 27% reduction of costs for the government and a 23% reduction of administrative burdens for citizens. The use of mediation techniques can be seen as a proactive, solution driven approach to reduce these burdens of citizens. - Different instruments are being used to involve local governments in the Programme. A successful instrument is the group of “Regional Ambassadors”. This is a group of mayors and alderman who stimulate the colleagues in their region to use proven instruments to reduce burdens for citizens and improve the quality of service delivery.
3 http://www.e-overheid.nl/sites/english/organisation/
64 - The State Secretary of the Interior and Kingdom Relations has initiated a “Volunteer Insurance”. Municipalities can insure all volunteers in their municipality. Before that, volunteers had problems concerning insurance against risks. Often it was unclear who (volunteers organisation or municipality) was responsible for certain risks. This caused a lot of bureaucratic hassle. Since the Volunteer Insurance, there is clarity on these questions and volunteers have less burdens when organising activities.
Life events
- As a result of the 2009 customer satisfaction measurement around life events the ministry of the Interior has made an analysis of the improvement measures around the least appreciated life events and challenged the other ministries to indicate the short term noticeability of the improvement. In addition the ministry of the Interior has decided to perform some Customer Journey Mappings around some life events, like moving house, decease, divorcing, and coming of age and to make a manual available to other organisations. The achieved improvements are subject of investigation in the new measurements.
65 Norway
By Carlo Thomsen and Jon Hovland, November 2009
Policy There has for some years been much focus upon adapting public services to individual needs and to increase user-friendliness and user satisfaction. In its work on reform of the public sector, the Norwegian Government places emphasis on user orientation.
The current government has issued a strategy for a continuous improvement of the public sector where user-friendliness is one of seven objectives. This objective should be achieved through means such as: - Increased transparency and openness - focus on plain language in all communication with citizens, - electronic communication as the main channel for communication, and - all relevant public services for citizens should be accessible through the internet
Better use of user satisfaction surveys is seen as an important tool to enhance user-friendliness.
Another objective in the strategy is more participation by, and cooperation with citizens. This objective should in part be achieved by creating contact points (virtual as well as physical) where citizens are invited to come up with ideas and suggestions for a better functioning public sector. An important aspect of this is to involve the users of public services in how these services are individually delivered.
Norway has so far not engaged in a systematic and whole of government approach to administrative burdens on citizens. But in recent years much has been done from state entities to make public functions and services more efficient and user friendly in accordance with the goals and means stated in the strategy, thereby reducing burdens on citizens. Two examples of this:
- The Norwegian Labour and Welfare Service (NAV) – has been reorganized as a kind of one stop shops for citizens across levels of government to ensure job opportunities for as many people as possible, opportunity of meaningful activity for those with special needs, and to secure income in accordance with rights enshrined in legislation. Before creating NAV in 2006 citizens would have to deal with two different state organizations and the local authorities for labour and welfare assistance and disbursement of public insurance benefits and social benefits, all together 3 organisations.
- Electronic forms, of which until now a system of a pre-filled Electronic tax form, probably has had significant impact for lessening administrative burdens for citizens.
Organisation The minister of Government Administration and Reform is politically responsible for user orientation on the national level, but each sector ministry is responsible for user orientation and burdens in its
66 sector. The government has established a Directorate for Public Management and Information Technology that will strengthen the government’s ability to implement policies on important issues such as user orientation and user friendliness by instruments such as issuing guidance material, gather information and knowledge on best practice and by offering training courses.
Measurement and high impact services As part of the strategy to improve the public sector, the Norwegian Government has taken an initiative for a national user survey of public services, and has set up a national citizens conference.
- The national user survey is going to be published later this year with plenty of information about how the public finds public services. The survey will be repeated each second year, with a special part going into some selected services the years in between.
- The national citizens conference was arranged in early 2007 - 150 persons from different parts of the country and different age and ethnic groups where present, Participants were selected from people active in the local community, but not representing organized interests. The participants spent a whole day discussing: - Concrete measures on how the public sector can be more user-friendly and tailored and more inclusive in the policymaking processes - What kind of adjustments can be done within the public sector in order of being more user- friendly and more inclusive
- The participants placed emphasis on plain language, better coordination between public services, more use of ICT and that users of public services are met with respect. The Ministry will use the report from the conference when working with general guidelines on how to make the Public Sector more open and inclusive.
All national public entities with extensive user interaction are encouraged to have user panels. All national public entities are required to carry out user surveys. The Directorate for Public Management and Information Technology is currently working on a survey and analysis on how government entities are carrying out and using user surveys to deliver better services to the public.
Reduction measures The most important steps are expanding the use of ICT for different kinds of communication between citizens and the public sector, both on the national and on the municipal level.
Life events. Work on life event services are at the moment primarily run by Tax Revenue Authorities through the concept “eDialogues”. The National Register is also working on a mapping of dialogues between the government and the population. The entire process is very much initiated through these two agencies with their interests first. The Ministry is considering how to follow up general focus on user needs. For evaluation, it will be important to see whether such an agency interest-oriented process coincides with user needs and burdens. The choice of services is based on workload and occurrences of miscommunication in and with Tax authorities.
The eDialogue project is based on the dialogue itself, identifying the relevant services and reportings, whilst portals and search engines will serve as gates of entry. The ideal is that one should be able to report once, and then get an automatic feed on status.
67 Poland
By Artur Kopijkowski-Gożuch (Updated 2009)
Policy
Making life of citizens easier due to the improvement of functioning of the public administration and a variety of institutions integrated with the state run service infrastructure has been tackled by many consecutive governments in recent years. The governmental program ‘More Cost Effective State’ adopted in 2005 embodies thinking of this challenge in the widest scope. However, the priority of treatment of the social ailment stemming from the red tape was given to the business world. The Regulatory Reform being implemented since September 2006 has been the first governmental initiative which links state reforms with the application of the SCM based measurements of administrative burdens. The zero baseline measurement which is underway now comprises almost 6200 IOs, out of which approximately 1300 concerns also citizens. This means that obligations imposed upon citizens in such areas as income tax, social security, working environment, health and consumer protection will be optimized upon the outcome of the quantification of burdens they cause. The measurement is scheduled to be complete by 1st of June 2010.
Organisation
The Ministry of Economy plays a central role in the execution of the Regulatory Reform in Poland. Its Regulatory Reform Unit within the Department of Economic Regulations which is in charge of all tasks related to the reform has 4 employees in total. There is no independent body involved in overseeing the legislative process and assessment of the administrative burdens to be imposed on businesses or citizens by newly drafted pieces of law.
A set of laws regulating matters connected with a citizen’s place of permanent residence, citizenship, birth etc. is managed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The Strategic Plan For Governing launched and publicized at the end of 2008 by the Chancellery of the Prime Minister (KPRM) set ambitious goals with a 3000 day time horizon for achieving them. Some of them overlap certain aspects of social life which undoubtedly are under the competence of Ministry of Internal Affairs. Under the section entitled Safety – Man, Family and Homeland one can find a goal which is formulated as Happiness of the Polish Family. According to the authors, a simplification of the procedures regulating the obtaining of a building permit should lead to a better access to one’s own shelter. Ultimately the existing and complex procedure should be replaced by a more friendly and less time consuming regulation. In the Section Trust & Pride of this plan one can read a statement referring to the question of a better efficiency of administration. It is planned to be achieved through the implementation of the e-state plan. The Ministry is also working on the amendment of laws imposing on citizens an obligation to report one’s own address of residence or stay longer than three months.
68 Measurement and high impact services As explained earlier, the SCM approach is currently applied for the quantification of all IOs mapped in the course of the baseline measurement. Some of the IOs will be measured upon the feedback relating to life events which make citizens perform them. The best exemplification of such OI is the one relating to the use by hospitals of a public waiting list for informing patients who require an elective surgery of its closest date.
As far as assessing a social impact of a new law is concerned all ministries are obliged to follow the national guidelines for regulatory impact assessment in this respect. Therefore ad hoc qualitative and quantitative studies are performed by them or on their request whenever needed. Sometimes changes in the law are provoked by the complaints voiced by the representatives of specific constituencies in the parliament.
As far as the administrative burdens stemming from IOs under quantification are concerned the Ministry of Economic Affairs will know its ranking by costliness when the project is completed. Recommendations for actions aimed at their reduction will be formulated upon the numerical outcome of the measurement in conformity with the SCM based methodology.
Reduction measures To be provided as soon as the implementation of the whole action at reducing burdens is over.
69 Portugal
By Ana Sofia Figueiredo (Updated in 2009)
Policy The reduction of administrative burdens for citizens is embedded in the Simplex Programme.
The Simplex Programme is Portugal’s national administrative and legislative programme towards the reduction of administrative burdens on businesses as well as citizens. It enjoys strong political support at the highest level since it is under the direct responsibility of the Prime Minister. It is based on annual action plans which are redefined from one year to the next.
The Simplex Programme exists since 2006 and every year new simplification initiatives/measures are presented. Until now more than 600 simplification measures were implemented. In 2006 there were 333 simplification projects regarding Citizens, Businesses and Public Administration, in 2007 were 235, 189 in 2008 and 200 this year. In average, the completion rate of the national project in these four years is 80%.
The Simplex Programme was extended to cover municipalities (Simplex Autárquico Programme) in order to promote co-operation and coordination across levels of government. Regardless of the objectives and guidelines presiding over the various simplification measures, the latter may be grouped into three categories: inter-sectoral measures requiring the collaboration between central and local administration; inter-municipal measures that reflect an identical commitment entered into by several municipalities over the same period of time; municipal measures that are exclusive of a municipality or parish. Starting in 2008 with 9 municipalities, there are now 60 municipalities participating individually or as an inter-municipal community. Last year there was a 85% completion rate.
The strategy aimed at simplification includes some generic goals such as: reducing the number of face-to-face interactions, reducing waiting times, minimizing the number of interactions required between users and public services for a single procedure, providing on-the-spot services and providing more and better information. The major outcomes of the Simplex Programme are the reduction of bureaucracy, the increase of the State transparency and Public Administration’s efficiency as well as to improve people’s relationship with public departments.
70 Supporting the national strategy for the eGovernment, the Simplex Programme together with other simplification projects allowed Portugal to be in a leading position in providing public services online and increasing the level of sophistication according to the 8th Benchmark Measurement made by the European Commission concerning the development of eGovernment (“Smarter, Faster, Better eGovernment” Report).
Organisation The Simplex Programme is politically supervised by the Secretary of State for Administrative Modernization (SEMA).
Even though each public body or Ministry is responsible for its own simplification initiatives included in the Simplex Programme, the Agency for the Administrative Modernization (AMA) is transversally responsible for: Submitting each annual Programme to Public consultation; Promote the Simplex Idea Award between the Civil Servants; Following the implementation of some SIMPLEX measures on an operational and technical level; Carrying out SCM measurements and other evaluation procedures.
Measurement and high impact services The methodology to measure administrative burdens for citizens is to use the Standard Cost Model with a few changes in order to adapt the methodology to the national reality. Some of the differences between our PT SCM and the EU SCM are:
PT SCM EU SCM Scope • Measurement starting point: processes • Measurement starting point: legislation according to life events • Legislation regard a broad theme such • Legislation regards the satisfaction of a as Environment or Education specific need such as buying a car or to • Transposition of EU Directives to get married national laws • National Law (including EU Directives)
Live Events • Deep processes mapping • Superficial processes mapping processes • Identification of all documents, channels mapping and information flows to comply with the administrative obligation Interviews • Selection of businesses and citizens that • Selection of businesses covered by the are covered by the all process (more same IO than one Information Obligation) Método de recolha • Interviews take in account all IO • Interviews only to 20% of IO de informação • Time estimation for some recurrent • Time estimation for all the other activities such as archive or copies Travel Costs and • Taken into account in all face to face • Taken into account only when Watting Time service delivery considered significant
71 Our fist project to measure the reduction of administrative burdens for citizens is starting now, as a part of a broader project of measurement of services for businesses.
The measured simplification concerned the life event “Buying a House” and besides small changes of the original methodology (such as taking into account the waiting time in a queue), the results were very positive. With the “Fast-Track Home Buying Scheme” the objective was to eliminate formalities and bureaucracy during the transfer and assignment of real estate and to permit the possibility of completing all the necessary procedures and acts at a single service point at the same time. The results of the SCM measurement revealed a reduction of 163,5 millions of minutes, this mean 83,2% less time spent in this service.
Besides this methodology, we keep analysing the citizens complaints sent to the National Portal’s and every year a national satisfaction inquire is made in the Citizen’s Shops Network (National Customer Satisfaction Index)
Reduction measures The Portuguese Citizen’s Card is perhaps one of the most inspiring best practices in Portugal. Nevertheless the Simplex Programme has much more to offer as best practices: On the Spot Firm, On the Spot Association; Birth Registration simplified; Elimination of obligatory military census; Marriage and divorce processes have been simplified; House acquisition, transmission and registry processes have been simplified; Online request of the automobile transfer registry, consult the request status, request and consult the automobile Permanent Certificate; Electronic Doctor’s Appointments Citizen’s Shops Network.
Service delivery around life events: The online services delivery is oriented around life events, as well as our National Simplification Programme. Our main life events for citizen’s are:
my House my Job my Education my Taxes and Social Contributions my Vehicle my Family my Security my Citizenship my Documents my Free Time my Money my Health
72 Regarding the face to face services delivery, there are many improvements around life events.
Birth
Concerning the life event birth it was opened in 2007 the Birth Registration Desk that allows a birth to be registered at a health unit (hospital or maternity clinic) immediately after a baby was born without the need to go to a civil registry office.
Since our Citizen’s Card involves the previous Identification Card, Social Security Card, National Health Service Card and Tax Office Card, when a child is registered at the Birth Registration Desk it is immediately registered in all this four public registries.
At the moment there are 45 Birth Registration Desks all over the country.
Marriage
Concerning the life event marriage, various changes have been introduced to simplify the marriage procedure. It is now possible to give notification of intent to marry at any civil registry office or online and it is no longer necessary to present various documents, which, from now on, are internally verified within the registry services.
The number of stages and deadlines in the marriage procedure has also been reduced, removing unnecessary obstacles.
When couples want to divorce themselves by mutual consent it is also available since 2007 the Divorce with Equitable Distribution and Registration of Property Desk where it is possible to handle all matters at a single access point like: Sharing of joint property; Payment of taxes owing; Request and complete all registrations of shared property.
Death
At last, about the life event death it was opened in 2007 The Succession and Inheritance Desk that allow citizens to deal with all operations and legal acts relating to succession on death in a single access point. Here families can establish who the beneficiaries are, divide the properties and goods of the deceased, pay the taxes owing, submit declarations to the Tax Office and request or complete all registrations relating to the divided estate.
None of the services described above were evaluated regarding existent administrative burdens, besides the qualitative way with satisfaction questionnaires or demand analyses.
73 Romania
By Ionut Vasilca (updated 2010)
Policy The state of affairs in public administration imposes a new approach of the simplification process and the administrative procedures. Therefore, the Central Unit for Administration Reform (CUPAR) in collaboration with other institutions and directorates implements a few number of simplification projects which have as expected results not only the reduction of bureaucracy but also the prevention on combating more effectively corruption in the public administration.
In 2005 - the first measures in the field of simplifying administrative procedures were coordinated by the Ministry of Administration and Interior - CUPAR. Since May 2007 - CUPAR and General Secretariat of the Government started a programme of reducing administrative burden at the ministerial level. In the National Strategy regarding prevention and fight against corruption within the vulnerable sectors and the local public administration (2008-2010) an objective is: “Simplification of administrative procedures in order to improve public services’’. This has prompted local and central authorities in simplifying certain internal procedures Romania has approved the National Strategy about Better Regulation. The objective was to reduce administrative burden in accordance with re-launched Lisbon Strategy. The implementation of this strategy was undertaken by the National Reform Plan 2007-2010.
Organisation - The Ministry of Administration and Interior (MAI) – Central Unit for Administration Reform (CUPAR) – administrative simplification procedures department – is leading the simplification process of administrative procedures regarding the citizens. - At the ministerial level the administrative simplification process is coordinated by MAI-CUPAR (regarding to the citizens) and the General Secretariat of the Government - GSG (regarding to the business). - MAI-CUPAR and GSG share the responsibility of the administrative simplification
Measurement and high impact services The interest of public services users holds a central place in CUPAR’s activity. When conceiving an administrative simplification project, our goal is to focus on making administrative regulations simpler and less burdensome for the citizens and the business environment, even if this process entails sometimes an increased effort from public institutions. In the process of modernizing public administration, administrative simplification is a fundamental element in all demarches to improve the quality of public services. In our vision, administrative simplification is mainly about: - making regulations more efficient and effective by reducing the cost and complexity of laws and regulations; - “easing” administration for citizens, business and public sector by using an accessible language between the administration and the public; - reducing the number of forms and methods of completing claims; also re-examine of it the form and the contents - introducing new communication technologies (e-administration);
74 Purpose of the administrative simplification process is to facilitate the relationship between the citizens and the administration.
To measure or to get insight into administrative burdens for citizens we used: sociological studies, reports of international institutions and the Methodological guide of simplifying administrative procedure. In the near future we want to implement SCM for the citizens in Romania. The financing of the implementation will be cover from the structural funds; a claim/application was already filed General information about the project: This project aims to develop a methodology to help identify the administrative burden, measuring the costs of these tasks, which are borne by the public administration and then determining the most appropriate simplification plans to reduce them. Simplification plans may contain proposals to amend some laws, amending the working procedures of the institution, but also measures that support a shift in the relationship with citizens. The objectives of the project are: - to develop / adapt the methodology of Standard Cost Model for the Citizens - to apply Standard Cost Model methodology for citizens in a package of legislation governing a particular segment of the public administration - training courses for contract staff operating within the scope of the pilot for to familiarize themselves with this new tool and Extended methodology central government level - Develop an analysis of whether the establishment of a structure / entity to coordinate the reduction of administrative burden in Romania.
The final beneficiaries of this project are citizens as direct users of public services and central government and local authorities as providers of public services. The project target group will consist of approximately 50-60 civil servants and contractual staff of the central and local government. The implementation period is estimated at 24 months
Reduction measures - Simplifying registering procedures The process of simplifying vehicle registration procedures started as part of the PHARE Project RO 03/IB/OT/01 which aimed at strengthening CUPAR’s and the National Modernization Network’s institutional capacity. CUPAR has elaborated a public policy on this issue. The simplification involves les documents needed to register, less bureaucratic procedures, an integrated IT system, the separation of the vehicle registration from other procedures. The new procedures will be approved by the government this summer. - Methodological guide of simplifying administrative procedures The guide aims to be an important document to support public administration in its path towards reform and modernization. The objective is to support public institutions in the formulation, planning, monitoring and evaluation of the simplification procedure. The guide’s target group is primarily represented by project managers, but also by the decision makers that wish to change procedures. In a PHARE project we applied this guide to several institutions from central at local level. The domains were land registration, immigration/working permits, funds payment, building permits. Procedures within 6 institutions have been assessed. For the central public administration 3 institutions have sent action plans in order to promote simplified administrative procedures.
75 Regarding the immigration/working the action plan that was drafted includes the following measures: Simplify the procedures of issuing work permits as well as of extending the right of residence for work reasons (to be achieved). Reduce the number of taxes and tariffs, starting with those whose administration costs are upper to effective payments (achieved). Increase transparency regarding the developed activities as well as facilitating useful and necessary information for foreigners through a web page of the institution having the possibility of its access by the disabled people (achieved). Elaborate specific formal procedures for each activity according to the provisions of SMAI A 005/2006 standard (to be achieved). Set up action rules in order to protect the employees and eliminate any suspicion on their professional activity regarding corruption (achieved).
In the land registration domain the action plan is focused on cadastre field (issues dealing with mergers and splitting): Change the Order 633/2006 issued by the president of the National Agency for Cadastre and Land Registration that approves the Regulations of organizing and functioning the Offices of Cadastre and Land Registration (achieved); Change the Order 634/2006 regarding the approval of the Regulations on the contents and cadastral documentation issuing in order to register them in Land Register (it is in approval procedure). For the fund payment the measures are o implement the new IT system (to be achieved); o develop a control database to include the last price quotas for each eligible investment element (to be achieved); For the 3 municipalities, a single plan concerning building permits was approved: The measures included in this plan and which correspond to the municipalities’ field of competence were already accomplished. The Ministry of Regional Development and Tourism started the change of the specific law in the field of urbanism by setting up the Inter-ministerial Committee and its working group regarding the reform process of law and regulations in the field of urbanism, architecture and buildings.
- Improvement of the legal framework regarding the road accidents management The objective is to reduce police involvement in damage-only traffic accidents. In order to reach this objective, a series of changes have to be made within the Romanian traffic and insurance legislation. The aim is to improve legislation, whereby damage-only accidents car routinely be settled among the parties involved and their insurance companies, without police involvement. A specific objective is introducing a common accident claims reporting format. Since 2009 this procedures is applying in Romanian and represent a major step in simplifying administrative procedures regarding damage-only accidents car for citizens and police
- The strategy on the implementation of the „one stop shop” practice in public institutions CUPAR has designed a strategy of implementation of the „one stop shop” in public institutions. The one stop shop concept is initially put into practice in the institutions under the Ministry of Administration and Interior in order to make it easier to evaluate to what degree this system responds to citizens’ expectations.
76 - Methodology regarding the organization and functioning of the „one stop shop” within the local service of people registry As a result of the implementation strategy, CUPAR has elaborated a methodology, together with other compartments of the Ministry of Administration and Interior. The „one stop shop” is designed to deal with identity cards, voting cards, vehicle registry certificates, registry plates, driving licenses and passports. In this respect, they release: - Passports urgently - in 2 hours - Passports release normal – electronic at most 30 days, normal at most 3 days - Fiscal records – on the spot in all country - Driving licenses – in 2 hours to change / - Vehicle registry certificates - in 2 hours - Plates number 2 hour - Registry numbers - in 2 hours - Criminal record on the spot, - Apostils documents 2 hours - Notice report and copies from the National Trade Register Office – on the spot and 24 hours for the complex notice report
77 Slovak Republic
By Lucia Pittnerová Fábryová and Nadežda Nikšová (Updated in 2010)
Policy The European Commission has embarked on an ambitious ‘Better Regulation’ exercise aimed at the reduction of administrative burden for European businesses by 25% by the year 2012. A key part of its Action Programme consists of measuring the administrative costs for businesses for meeting obligations to provide information under EU legislation and national implementing legislation. There are 12 priority areas selected by the European Council.
In 2007 in the frame of the Better Regulation initiative the government of the Slovak Republic adopted a plan for improving of the legislative process. In the period of legislative preparations apart from financial, environmental, social and business area and employment also, the impacts on information society are examined. From July 2010 the unified methodology came into force. The impact of drafts of legal documents on the information society is examined by the Ministry of Finance .
Our country also pays attention for reducing administrative burdens for citizens. New basic eGovernment services are continually implemented and they are connected to the Central Public Administration Portal (CPAP).
CPAP provides central and integrated access to public administration information sources and services. CPAP is the crucial access point to all public administration portals. The public administration portal represents a two-level system of portals formed by the central public administration portal and second level portals, the so-called administration section portals belonging to the respective administrators. From technological point of view, CPAP represents primarily a content management system. CPAP should satisfy minimum the following requirements: • Provision of information on public administration services, • Information search according to life events or key words. CPAP mainly presents a centralized portal solution where all available information and logically structured electronic services accessible in a uniform manner are placed in one place.
In the Slovak Republic there is a specific programme for measurement of the administrative burden reduction for businesses. The most obligations appropriate for reduction of burden comprise the Act on health insurance and the field of taxes, customs and fees. The 23 measurements have been suggested for adoption in the document which is present to the government for acceptance. There are also ongoing projects for reducing administrative burdens for businesses e.g. - eServices of the Slovak Business Register, the Registry of Surplus State-Owned Immovable Property Offered by Special Tenders, the Electronic Notarial Archive and the General Submission
On May 2008 the National Concept of eGovernment was adopted where creation of the Integrated Public Administration System (IPAIS) is intended. IPAIS will enable on-line simultaneous access to services for both - citizens and businesses from various points, i.e. time and distance barriers of public access to services are minimized and the time needed for official matters processing is reduced.
78 The improvement of the efficiency of public administration is based on an integrated concept derived from a comprehensive analysis of the processes of services provided by public administration and analysis of public administration information systems infrastructure. The outcome of the concept is model of eGovernment architecture based on the services provided by public administration. This means that the citizen is in the centre of interest of the development of infrastructure and processes. It is intended to bring more accessible, improved and more varied services that are less of a burden on the citizen, are less costly and provide much greater benefits than now. This can be achieved only by means of offering all services in one place (front office). The front office can be an Internet portal accessible via PC, mobile phone, kiosk, or DTV, or a traditional office located in almost all municipalities.
The Operational Programme of Information Society (OPIS) is a reference document to be used as a basis for the provision of assistance for all projects concerning eGovernment, and the digitalisation and making accessible of the content of repository institutions and broadband Internet connection, too. OPIS is supported from EU structural funds. The content of the OPIS is divided into three interrelated priority areas – analysis of the current situation in the area of eGovernment, strategy of the operational programme and the system of implementation.
Within the OPIS the feasibility studies of the first axes “Electronisation of public administration and development of electronic services” were created, mainly the Electronisation of public administration and development of electronic services on the level of the basic components of eGovernment, eServices on the central level of state administration and eServices on the local and regional level of self-government. An important part of these studies is cost benefits analysis where the methodology for measuring of the administrative burdens for citizen included.
Organisation The Ministry of Finance of the Slovak Republic is the central body of the state administration in the field of eGovernment. There are 2 departments responsible for the reduction of administrative burdens for citizens – it is the Strategy and Coordination of Information Society Department and the Department of Legislation, Standards and Security of Information Systems.
The Ministry of Economy and Construction of the Slovak Republic is a central body of state administration of the Slovak Republic in the area of creation and support of business environment. That Ministry is responsible co-ordinator for the reduction of administrative burdens for businesses.
Measurement and high impact services The methodological approach in feasibility study is to make up the Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA). It is likely that within the feasibility study CBA will be evaluated. There is also a part how to measure direct financial benefits, e.g. fees and charges and indirect nonfinancial benefits, e.g. the time saving of users and qualitative benefits. It will be possible to measure the financial statement of burdens for citizen, before and after implementation of the project according CBA. The implementation of the programme for burden reduction for businesses comes out from Standard Cost Model (SCM).
79 Reduction Measures The Slovak Republic currently use these methodologies, and we welcome the work of the Learning Team. During our participation we would like to focus on the information in the area of citizen and public sector in other Member States, specially: - How to create better system for measuring administrative burdens for citizen; - To exchange best practices in this field; - To discuss a common list of eGovernment services for life events.
Life Event Measures Description of life events: - Registration of a child; - Registration of marriage; - Registration of death.
No. Question Answer, description. 1. What is the state of art The registration of a child: on service delivery Nowadays the birth is announced by the doctor or by one of the around the life events parents to a Registry Office. An announcement should be done by the birth, marriage and doctor who was at the birth of a child or by one of the parents within death three working days from the date of the birth. Mother may register the child even after this time (as soon as it is possible to make the notification). When the registration is provided personally its identity has to be confirm by the valid ID card. The first birth certificate will be register in a paper and in an electronic register (book) of birth. The registration of marriage: Applicants should fill in an application and enclose: - birth certificate (1), - proof of nationality (2), - proof of residence (3), - proof of personal identification numbers (4), - death certificate of the deceased spouse, or even marriage certificate marriage erased in case of widow or widower, or a final decree of divorce the marriage in case of divorced or divorced, or a final judgment of marriage invalid (5). Documents no. (2), (3) and (4) can be replaced by presentation of a valid ID card. The application should be submitted to a Registry Office (according to the place of marriage). The written record is made about the marriage and entered to the electronic register (book) of marriage. The registration of death: Registration of death person is made by the doctor within three working days after the examination of dead. Further details are entered in the register (book) of death at the Registry Office by the person arranging the funeral, no later than five working days from the date when the deaths became known. For registration into the Register of death should be submitted the letter on the examination of dead issued by a doctor, an ID card of the deceased and the identity of the person arranging the funeral. 2. What are the services Registry Office is state records on personal status of individuals who connected to this life were born, married or died in the Slovak Republic and Slovak event? Republic nationals who were born, married or died abroad. Nowadays all types of registration or announcements (the birth, the marriage and the death) are provided personally at the Registry Office. The Registry Office includes three types of registers (“books”): - Register of birth - Register of marriage - Register of death
80 3. How do citizens value The Registry Office can register the birth, marriage or death that the services? happens in the office regional territory. The Registry Office can provide information or official statements from its registry. It is not possible to reach statements from another Registry Office. All services are based on a personal visit at the Registry Office. 4. How the administrative The separate applications for each Registry Office have to be burdens are identified submitted. The official statement from the registers can be obtained (both in a quantitative only by a personal visit of the register. The personal visit is in large and qualitative way)? cities associated with waiting periods and also with travelling from citizen residence to the place of Registry Office. Request for the official statement can be sent through the mail (post). Entry into the Birth or the Death register and the first statement of the birth or death certificate is free of charge. Extract from the Register of birth and Register of death - another duplicate costs 1,5 €. 5 What are the main The tree registers (books) are not interconnected. Some data are findings/ perceived duplicated. There is not online providing of the services for the problems? citizens. Direct links from hospitals to Registry Office does not exist. Communication and registration takes place by paper way. 6. What are the A Feasibility study on central electronic register (birth, marriage and (foreseen) solutions? death books) was conducted in 2009, where two main categories of electronic services are planned: - Registry entries into the Registry events books; - Official statements from the Registry events books. The project has started in October 2009 and should last 24 month. Centralization of data in the central registry (currently there are 900 Registry offices) will allow to verify registered data. The need for submitting and attestation of documents will be eliminated. Connection between registers and hospitals (and also courts, municipal offices or funeral offices) will be created in future. Some other critical factors to establish or verify personal status, particularly data on adoption, parentage determination (matrix events) will be added. Return on investment is in maintaining of the registry fees, but particularly in saving time and thus also the operating costs for registries. Impacts will be measured according the Cost benefit analyses methodology. The return on investment is 5 years. According to the National Concept of eGovernment and according to the Act No. 275/2006 Coll.. on Information Systems of Public Administration, as amended, there is supposed the establishment of the Integrated Service Points (ISP) , where an ISP employee will mediate eServices to citizens, i.e., ISP will provide assisted eServices of public administration. 7. What are the learning The processing of electronic services can help to reduce the points? qualitative and quantitative burdens of citizens and address the main problems identified at birth, at marriage and in the deaths.
81 Slovenia
By Matija Kodra and Danica Šaponja
Policy At the Ministry of Public Administration we have set a goal to establish friendly public administration, which will provide assistance as well as support in assertion of users’ rights. Therefore we perform activities to reduce administrative burdens on the basis of a national anti-bureaucratic programme as well as on the basis of the Programme for administrative burdens reduction for 25% till the year 2012, prepared by the European Commission. In our work we cooperate with a number of interested stakeholders: chambers, non-governmental organizations etc.
For this purpose every year the Programme of measures is prepared, which contains regulation simplification proposals in various fields of life of citizens and businesses. Irrespective of this citizens and businesses continuously send proposals for simplification and administrative burdens reduction. For this purpose we have opened an electronic address for the citizens to send their proposals and opinions regarding the state administration’s activity. All proposals are thoroughly examined and forwarded to competent institutions, from which we demand prompt solving of the problem and sending the answer to the customer and to us. The majority of proposals are from the field of public administration, finances, work, internal affairs and the economy.
- main goal of our ministry is establishing a friendly and an effective public administration; i.e. friendly towards users who are the reason for the existence of the public administration, and towards civil servants who are the nucleus of the public administration – to see people instead of information, number or data
- the Government of the Republic of Slovenia adopted first annual Programme of Measures for Reduction of Administrative Burdens at the session on 10 November 2005 (both for enterprises and citizens) collecting proposals to simplify legislation in order to reduce administrative burdens (web site, official appeal)
Organisation
- Ministry of Public Administration (Directorate for e-Government and Administrative Processes) is responsible for coordinating, measuring and reducing administrative burdens for citizens – ex post (in order to prevent new burdens (ex-anet) also all drafts of legislation have to be checked by the Ministry of Public Administration since the beginning of the year 2006)
- Measuring and reducing administrative burdens for enterprises and citizens are high on political agenda (one of main goals of our Government and one of Slovenian priorities during EU Presidency)
- team responsible for all projects on “better regulation” (EU and national level) - 10 people
- in Slovenia there is no independent committee involved
82 Measurement and high impact services
- we are planning to adopt and adapt modified Dutch Standard Cost model for citizens (at the moment we use SCM with adjustments)
- from 2005 we collect all proposals, suggestions and complaints about reducing, simplifying or eliminating unnecessary burdens on official web site (after checking they are placed into Programme of Measures for present and coming year)
- focus on: - life events (birth of a child, renewing the validity of the registration certificate, building a house, etc.) - exposed groups (unemployed, pensioners, expectant mothers, handicapped persons, etc.) - to achieve reduction and simplification results: if possible automatic granding of benefits, single data collection, re-use of information, prefilling of forms, data sharing (exchange of data between public servants by official duty)
Reduction measures Special attention is being paid to systematic reduction of administrative obstacles for citizens who on the basis of various life events enter into relations with the state. It is a complex system of rules extending to various fields: creating a family, birth of a child, creating a home, education, taxes, arranging car documentation etc. In this way important simplifications have been achieved for the citizens, through which many administrative obstacles and burdens and with these the costs have been removed.
Much energy is being invested in birth of a child procedures simplification: forms simplification, enabling of electronic submission of applications, possibility of arranging certain rights deriving from fatherhood before the child is born etc.
- single entry point (regarding the birth of a child and procedures for execution of rights)
- possibility to submit applications electronically (electronic signature)
- reduction of necessary forms and documents (from 30 to 15) and simplification of subsistent ones
- abolition of local competence for execution of rights upon childbirth
Change of residence procedures simplification should include change of these data via the internet, territorial jurisdiction has been abolished. Savings amount to 4,9 million € on yearly basis.
- automatic electronic reminder for renewing the validity of registration certificate
- abolition of local competence (also for passports, driving licences and personal ID)
Regarding fees payment simplification the possibility of electronic payment of judicial fees has been established, certain administrative fees have been eliminated (e.g. in tax procedures).
We have established the abolition of certain personal identity documents recall obligation in the Official Gazette. A citizen had to in the case of a lost passport personally call at the Official Gazette
83 Office in Ljubljana and submit a recall as well as pay a certain fee. This obligation in now eliminated. Recall announcement was eliminated for a loss of a personal identity card as well. Savings amount to 0,14 million € per year.
One of major achievements is personal income tax assessment simplification. The customer will receive decision issued by Tax Administration by its official duty. This decision will contain personal income tax assessment for the previous year. If the customer will not agree with the decision it will be possible to file a complaint within the time given. Thus an enormous administrative burden, which the state imposed upon the citizens every year, was eliminated. Furthermore, we estimate that the savings amount to 22,8 million € per year.
- for year 2000: time spend per person (141 minutes), costs per person (38 €)
- for year 2007: prefilling of forms – time spend (53 min), costs (22€)
- for year 2008: prefilling written order - anticipated time spend (29 min), costs (8€)
We have enabled the citizens to prolong their drivers licence via the internet.
Very important – complicated operations and unnecessary bureaucracy should not be transmited from paper operations into electronical - services
Deepening under a new legislative period
The Government of the Republic of Slovenia at the 25th regular session (7 May 2009), adopted the following decisions:
1. Programme for Administrative Obstacles Elimination (41 measures) Action Programme for Reduction of Administrative Burdens for 25% till the year 2012 Methodology for Administrative Costs Measurement as a uniform tool to implement the Action programme (SCM). 2. Ministries need to implement the programme and reduce burdens for business and citizens for 25% till November 2012 at the latest. 3. Government authorised Permanent Interministerial Working Group on Better Regulation and Reduction of Administrative Burdens to set a list of regulations needed to implement the Action programme, dead line being 30 June 2009. 4. Ministry of Public Administration will carry out the measurements of administrative burdens as well as organize training. 5. Ministry of Labour, Family and Social Affairs will continue to realize Systematic Administrative Costs Reduction for 25% till the year 2010 in the field of labour law (started 2008).
Actionprogramma 2009 – 2012 “Simple Rules!”
The programme of the Government for eliminating administrative barriers, and reducing administrative burdens by 25% by 2012 ‘SIMPLE RULES!’, as a fundamental strategic document to reduce administrative burdens and eliminate administrative barriers (hereinafter EAB), is part of efforts to improve public administration, or the entire project to eliminate administrative barriers, and a continuation and upgrade of the planned and systematic operation of the Government, consisting of preventive activities, i.e. preventing new administrative barriers from arising, as well as
84 eliminating existing administrative burdens, and based on the Government’s adopted decisions and action plans, as well as programmes to remove administrative barriers adopted by the Government on the proposal of the Ministry of Public Administration.
The programme ‘SIMPLE RULES!’ consists of two parts.
The first part is represented by the Action Programme for Reducing Administrative Burdens by 25% by 2012 in the Republic of Slovenia, and presents the fundamental commitment of the Government to reduce burdens at a national level, as well as the commitments of the ministries to reduce administrative burdens in their fields by 2012. By adopting this programme, the Government has for the first time instructed all ministries to reach the -25% objective not only in the priority areas specified by the EC, but also in other areas of individual ministries by 2012. An integral part of this programme is the continuation of activities in the field of labour legislation by 2010. The annex to the Action Programme, i.e. the Common methodology for measuring administrative costs adopted according to the international methodology SCM, is a fundamental tool for measuring administrative burdens; it has to be approved by the GRS and thus determined as the common tool for measuring administrative burdens.
The second part of the programme contains forty-one concrete measures for eliminating administrative barriers and concrete simplifications. Concrete measures were prepared on the basis of proposals from citizens, business entities, chambers, ministries etc.
Considering the commitment of the EU and Republic of Slovenia to implement objectives for drafting better regulations and reducing administrative burdens by 25%, and consequently increasing the competitiveness of the economy and drawing closer to the goal of establishing an efficient and friendly public administration as one of the fundamental Lisbon Strategy objectives, we estimate that to achieve these objectives in Slovenia it is necessary to perform a review of legislation by individual priority areas and measure and simplify the existing regulations by 2012. The European Commission calls upon Member States to complete the phase of measuring administrative costs and burdens by 2010 at the latest, which is why the Government assigns responsibility to the line ministries (as managers of regulations in their area) to achieve the objective of reducing administrative burdens by 25% by 2012, whereby the measurements in all working areas (13 EC areas – Table 1 and other working areas of line ministries) must be completed in December 2010 at the latest, and to the Ministry of Public Administration to carry out training, measuring, coordination, consultation and supervision over the implementation of the whole programme.
The Action Programme consists of five phases: the first phase encompasses a review of the legislation in a particular area; the second phase encompasses the measurement of a particular area in accordance with the common methodology; the third phase contains the collection of proposals for simplifying the legislation; the fourth phase encompasses the procedure of amending acts and implementing regulations based on adopted proposals for reducing administrative burdens; and the final phase includes re-measurement of administrative costs and determining the efficiency of amendments to achieve the Action Programme's objective. It should be pointed out that upon the conclusion of a given phase, the next must begin immediately.
85 Phase 1: Review of legislation of the relevant area (deadline – November 2009)
Ministry of Public Administration is responsible to carry out training, measuring, coordination, consultation and supervision over the implementation of the whole programme. Better Regulation and Administrative Processes Division is established within Ministry of Public Administration. During first phase we identified which areas and legal acts needs to be analysed. On behalf of line ministries and stakeholders we decided to include nearly 70 acts and more than 3.000 regulations into measurement phase.
Areas that are included into measurement phase: 1. Financial service 2. Economic sector 3. Agriculture 4. Environment 5. Justice 6. Education 7. Higher Education 8. Health 9. Transport and Defence 10. Culture 11. Cohesion 12. Social 13. Employment law
In aspect of promotion we already : in November 2009 we conducted Conference Conference, Administrative Burden Reduction for 25 % until 2012 »Simple Rules«; training for civil servants for the measurement of administrative costs in November 2009; formed a corporate design in the frame of administrative costs and administrative burdens measurement in the regulation of the Republic of Slovenia operation we made; we organize frequent consultation with stakeholders regarding further activities on measurement execution
Phase 2: Measurement of administrative costs in accordance with the common Methodology (Common Methodology for Measuring Administrative Costs) – Ddeadline: December 2010) At the moment we are in second phase, which is measurement phase. We are conducting baseline measurement with four external consultants and our goal is to complete this 2nd phase till end of this year.
Phase 3: Collecting substantive proposals for reducing administrative burdens Deadline: June 2011
Phase 4: Implementing procedure of the amendment of statutory provisions and implementing regulations based on received proposals for reducing administrative burdens Deadline: May 2012
Phase 5: Re-measurement of administrative costs and determination of efficiency of amendments to realise the Action Plan objective Deadline: November 2012
86 E-SOCIAL PROJECT
The Republic of Slovenia is a social state and Slovenian system of social protection has successfully alleviate the transition shocks for residents in the nineties. Also nowadays when global and consequently national economy is in crisis the system provides a relatively good protection for its residents. In order to standardize the procedures for exercising rights from public funds, on 15 July 2010, National Assembly adopted Exercise of Rights to Public Funds Act, which goal is to justly distribute founds earmarked for social means/benefits to those who actually needs it the most.
Act provides 13 different rights of which on the basic of the application citizens will be able to exercise on the competent Centre for social work for the following cash benefits, subsidies and payments: 1. Child allowance; 2. Financial social assistance; 3. Security income; 4. State scholarships; 5. Reduced payment for kindergarten; 6. Snack subsidy for scholars and students; 7. Lunch subsidy for scholars; 8. Transport services subsidy for scholars and students; 9. Relief for social welfare payments; 10. Contribution to the payment of a home care assistant; 11. Rental subsidy; 12. Right to cover the difference up to the full value of health services; 13. Right to payment contribution for compulsory health insurance.
Exercise of Rights to Public Funds Act provides single decision-making process on social rights on the basis of assets of claimants and family members – so called: related persons. Information on financial standing of individuals/claimants about their property, incomes and their status are located at 25 different institutions and in 48 different data sources.
In order to simplify and standardize the implementation of procedures for exercising rights from public funds, on 7 January 2010, the Government of the Republic of Slovenia adopted Program of projects e-Social. This Program will provide IT support for the implementation of Exercise of Rights to Public Funds Act. Concept of the Program e-Social includes: Linking/merging records/registers; Establishing of One stop shop – competent Center for social work; Unification of elements that affect on decision making regarding social rights; Unification/harmonization of procedures regarding reconciliation of amount for social benefits. A common definition and consideration of income, property, number of family members, etc., will contribute to more quality and more equitable decision-making, greater systemic orderliness and sustainability of public financing.
For social workers at Centre for social work implementation of this Programe will mean simplified and faster processing of routine tasks and non-problematic cases and more time to work with cases that require in-depth professional analyses. With the concept of e-Social the Republic of Slovenia will define new, more transparent and simpler system for exercising rights from public funds.
Project is in the stage of preparation and ministerial coordination so we can provide more detailed information during next year. It is planned that the project will be completed in late 2012.
87 Workprogramme of Slovenia, list of actions related to citizens (business taken out)
1 ELIMINATING DELIVERY OF “BLANK FORMS” 2 SIMPLIFYING PROCEDURES IN CASES OF MISLAID PUBLIC DOCUMENT 3 ABOLITION OF THE CONSENT OF SOCIAL WORK CENTRES IN SELLING OF SECURITIES ON BEHALF OF MINORS 7 ELIMINATING THE TERRITORIAL JURISDICTION OF EMPLOYMENT SERVICES 8 OPTION OF ELECTRONIC APPLICATION SUBMISSION FOR ACQUIRING A RIGHT TO UNEMPLOYMENT ALLOWANCE 11 ELIMINATING ANNUAL SUBMISSION OF ENROLMENT CERTIFICATES IN THE ELIGIBILITY PROCEDURE FOR FAMILY PENSION 12 SIMPLIFYING THE PROCEDURE IN SUBMITTING INCOME FORECAST FROM LEASING PROPERTY IN CASE OF CARETAKER’S APARTMENTS 22 ABOLITION OF SUBMISSION OF EXPERT’S DETAILED REPORTS IN PAPER FORM 24 CALL CENTRE – CALL BEFORE YOU DIG 27 SIMPLIFYING PROCEDURES IN ACQUIRING SPATIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL PERMITS INTO ONE SINGLE PERMIT RELATING TO SPATIAL INTERVENTION 28 ESTABLISHING A DATABASE OF ADMINISTRATIVE ACTS IN THE FIELD OF CONSTRUCTION 30 ELIMINATING ADMINISTRATIVE BARRIERS IN THE FIELD OF JUDICIAL ADMINISTRATION 31 SIMPLIFYING THE COURT PROCEDURE FOR EXTENDING THE RIGHT TO MAINTENANCE 32 ELIMINATING THE OBLIGATION TO RETURN VEHICLE REGISTRATION CERTIFICATES 33 SIMPLIFYING THE ELIGIBILITY PROCEDURE FOR THE RIGHT TO REDUCED FEES FOR PRESCHOOL EDUCATION 34 ESTABLISHING CENTRAL SCHOOL EDUCATION RECORDS 35 SIMPLIFYING THE PROCEDURE FOR STUDENT PUBLIC TRANSPORT SUBSIDIES 36 SIMPLIFYING THE PROCEDURE OF PROLONGING HEALTH INSURANCE VALIDITY FOR THOSE PARTICIPATING IN SCHOOL EDUCATION 41 SIMPLIFYING PROCEDURES IN CASE OF MISLAID, LOST OR STOLEN HEALTH CARDS
88 Spain
By Aida Joaquín Acosta (Updated in 2010)
Policy Reduction of administrative burdens is high in the Spanish political agenda. The President of the Government has compromised to achieve a reduction of the 30% by 2012. This reduction program refers to burdens that affect enterprises, specially small and medium ones (SME’s), and involves the three territorial authorities: national, regional and local. In addition to this long term approach, three packages of fast track actions (FTA’s) have been passed in the Council of Ministers, which include measures that have a direct economical effect.
Although the Spanish approach to reduce administrative burdens has been mainly oriented to enterprises, the citizens are far from being forgotten. In fact, the last package of FTA’s includes not only measures for SME’s but also to citizens to be implemented, most of them, by the end of 2010.
In addition, Spain has assumed, for the fourth time, the European Council Presidency during the first semester of 2010. In this context, one of the Spanish priorities was and is still to promote initiatives to reduce administrative burdens within the EU and nationally, placing particular emphasis on the achievement of the European reduction targets set for the year 2012, both for companies (chiefly small and medium sized enterprises) and for citizens in general. This fact shows the political momentum the burden reduction for citizens has achieved in Spain in just a few years.
Other initiatives have been taken forward, such as the transposition of the Services Directive or the creation of an electronic identity card with electronic signature.
A key milestone has been the approval of Law 11/2007, on Electronic Access to Public Services for Citizens (LAECSP). It offers a regulatory framework that eliminates legal barriers for its full development, although the key factor of this law is the recognition of a new citizen right: electronic access to the services of the Administrations. This citizen right is an obligation for the Administrations to make all of their public services available on-line by 31st December 2009.
The Law establishes a series of rights for citizens, among which the following stand out:
. Use electronic means to obtain information, make enquiries, show consent, make claims, make payments, carry out transactions and object to resolutions and administrative acts. . Choose the channel for dealings with the Administrations . Not be obliged to use specific technologies in dealings with the Administrations.
89 . Not have to provide data that is already in the hands of the Public Administrations. . Find out electronically the status of their procedures. . Obtain electronic copies of electronic documents that form part of a record. . Electronic conservation of the document. . Obtain the necessary means of electronic identification.
An action plan in the sphere of the General State Administration and its associated or dependent bodies has been approved, which is based on the following strategies:
. Citizen focused services . Adaptation of the procedures to the LAECSP . Common infrastructures and services . Horizontal Actions: training, quality controls, administrative interoperability, etc
Organisation At present, the main developments in terms of reduction of administrative burdens for citizens are carried out from the Ministry of the Presidency, in the State Department for Public Service, within which is the Directorate General for Administrative Procedures and Organization, and particularly, from the Sub-Directorate General for the Improvement and Simplification of Procedural Regulation. This unit includes around 10 people involved in burden reduction.
In terms of cooperation and collaboration, it has been created three groups to deal with very specific and relevant issues regarding burden reduction with the participation of the Autonomous Communities: one related to legal aspects as authorizations and previous communication; a second one referred to the development of methodological aspects of the citizens’ burden measurement and a third one which focused on life events: for citizens, birth and death of a relative and for business, the creation of an industrial establishment.
Measurement Spain is developing a methodology for measuring impact on citizens, called “Bureaucratic Effort Index”, based on internal data. In parallel, Spain has developed a “comprehensive but simple” version of the Standard Cost Model for measuring administrative costs on new and existing regulation in the framework of the Regulatory Impact Assessments. This model that the General State Administration has agreed with all Autonomous Communities will be used, on the near future, on the evaluation of burdens for citizens.
Reduction measures In Spain, the main channels used for the reduction of administrative burdens for citizens are, firstly, the adoption of several FTAs that would have a direct impact on the quality of public services
90 perceived by citizens; and secondly, a holistic approach to simplify bureaucracy through managing Life Events. Regarding FTAs it could be possible to identify, among others, the following:
1. Electronic identification of the driver responsible for a traffic offence by the vehicle owner; 2. Electronic Application for guaranteed salary benefits; 3. Electronic Processing of Grants for University Studies; 4. Electronic application for maternity and paternity benefits from the National Social Security Institute without the need for the citizen to present any documentation; 5. Elimination of the obligation to present certain documents along with applications for retirement pensions to the National Social Security Institute; 6. Electronic Renewal of Temporary Residence and Work Permits; 7. Elimination of the presentation of certified copies of official academic certificates required to take part in certain selection processes (for civil servants); 8. Electronic or Telephone Application for the European Health Card, …
These actions were part of the Royal Decree approved by the Council of Ministers in the 17th April 2009. The 17% of the total of measures integrated in the Royal Decree were addressed only to citizens, not even civil servants. However, they meant the mayor savings: 66% of the total. Particularly, the initiatives that mixed the use of information technologies with the fostering of coordination or with the administrative simplification were the ones which reduced more costs.
The Life Event approach is based on a one-door-in website that provides all kind of administrative information to citizens and entrepreneurs (www.060.es). This information is organized in three different manners: topics of general interests as Education, Health & Safety, Housing or Employment; in profiles as youngsters, women, elderly, disabled people, immigrants or tourists; and through life events (LE): having a child, studying, searching for a job, getting married, looking for a house, going to the doctor, travelling, paying taxes and going into retirement.
For illustrative purposes, it might be interesting to pay special attention to some LE:
Having a child, which offers three different kinds of information: Subsidies: for multiple birth, 2.500 euros per child birth... Health: ask for a doctor appointment, access to the vaccination calendar... Personal documents: on-line application for birth certificates, international & national adoption procedure information... http://www.060.es/todo_sobre/tener_un_hijo/index-ides-idweb.jsp
Getting married, download of the form for registering a common law marriage and an on-line marriage certificate application.
91 http://www.060.es/todo_sobre/casarse/index-ides-idweb.jsp
Death: on-line death certificate application
The instrument that might be used by citizens and entrepreneurs for completing secured electronic transactions with their Public Administrations is the Electronic Identity Card (eID). This is a compulsory document for all Spanish citizens and serves to a double purpose: to prove the identity of the owner and to sign documents electronically, warranting authenticity, integrity, confidentiality and non-repudiation of information, messaging and communication.
The eID is, definitely, an essential tool to enhance the quality of public services. Moreover, it provides the necessary confidence to citizens when dealing with their administrations by electronic means, fostering the use of Information and Communication Technologies and, thus, facilitating the burden reduction. http://www.dnielectronico.es/
92 Sweden
By Anna Enström Järleborg (2008)
Policy The government has in January 2008 launched a new action plan for e-government. "Make it as easy for as many as possible" is the goal. The public sector shall be "customer orientated, efficient and effective". Ways of doing this is to improve the automation in the case handling process, remove legal obstacles, co-operation within public sector, and improve the technical co-ordination and improved service to citizens and businesses. There is no special policy for reduction of the administrative burden for citizens. Though there is a policy for businesses.
Organisation The e-government work is lead by the unit for Public Administration at the Ministry of Finance (2-3 persons). They have the responsibility for policymaking in this area. To get the other ministries involved there is a State secretary group for e-government (10 persons). Verva - The Swedish Administrative Development Agency there (80 persons) has a co-ordination and supporting role to implement intention of the Ministry of Finance. Verva works in close cooperation with the other central government agencies to implement the policies.
Due to the Swedish public management system, which compare to other MS is much decentralised, the actual work is done at individual agencies at the state, regional and local levels. They are individually responsible for the development of e-government at their own organisations. In these work different co-operation groups of agencies has emerged.
Measurement and high impact services Verva has developed a guideline on how to do process analysis (2 1/2 days to analyse) to estimate the potential savings in automation of different case handling processes. The case handling process is described as a generic seven steps sequence. The process starts with information and ends with archive. The critical questions to ask are if some of the steps could be digitalized.
Much has been done to improve and increase the data and information exchange within public sector. Solutions on electronic identification have been developed to secure the exchange.
To improve the effectiveness and the customer focus many co-operation projects among state, regional and local agencies has been launched. Since customer often has much contact with many agencies there is a great need for co-operation within public sector.
One of the big obstacles to lower the administrative burden is the rigorous data protection regulations that prevent agencies to share data.
93 Reduction measures There is no country joint measure on administrative burden. Each agency does own work in reducing the administrative burden. Each agency in their daily life tries to make itself more effective, efficient and customer focused. To increase this work the Ministry of Finance has written an action plan, to put focus on different important areas.
94 Turkey
By Akın AK and Celal Mert ASLAN(updated in 2010)
Policy Turkish Government is committed to set an effective, efficient, accountable, citizen-oriented and transparent public management and to ensure that public services are provided quickly with low cost and in high quality and simplified manner. In this context, administrative simplification and reduction of administrative burdens (AB) are on the forefront issue of the government’s agenda. This commitment is expressed in 9th Development Plan (2007-2013) and Information Society Strategy (2006-2010). The reduction of AB for citizens is also a part of the 60th Government Programme.
Organisation The Department for Administrative Development which is structured under the Prime Ministry Office is mainly responsible for reduction of red tape, administrative simplification and e-government projects. Therefore, the Department for Administrative Development is the central organization throughout the country dealing with such issues. The Department is coordinating projects among different ministries in order to help to take the pressure off and make life easier for citizens. There are also Strategy Development Units situated under each Ministry and other independent public bodies to handle simplification issues. In addition to these Units there is Coordination Committee for Improvement of Investment Environment (YOİKK) focuses on businesses. These are all functioning with harmony by means of the coordination of the Department for Administrative Development. The main responsibilities of the departments are as follows; . To conduct researches and make recommendations to the ministries and other public organizations in order to improve public administration. . To make administrative procedures and activities simple and easy-to-use. . To ensure that all citizens have better life by reducing bureaucracy and paperwork. . To ensure the coordination among the administrations which are responsible of improving public administration. . To plan and implement projects to reduce bureaucracy and paperwork in provision of public services. . To introduce new improvements in public services those take place either in other agencies in Turkey or countries around the world.
The main tasks of the departments are as follows; . SCM Methodology - Department for Administrative Development, Prime Ministry . Administrative Simplification - Department for Administrative Development, Prime Ministry . Citizen Charters - Department for Administrative Development, Prime Ministry . Citizen Satisfaction Online Survey - Department for Administrative Development, Prime Ministry . E-government – e-government Work Group - Department for Administrative Development, Prime Ministry
Measurement and high impact services Citizen satisfaction survey, SCM and qualitative studies are the most commonly used methods to determine burdensome and problematic areas. For instance, Administrative Burdens in Registration of Vehicles have been measured using SCM Methodology. E-registration system will be ready to use in 2010. With this system there will be an only single-online point to finish the procedure. Application period will be diminished from 6 days to an hour.
95 For other burdensome and problematic areas, the Department divided matters into three pillars; delegation of authority, inter/intra-institutional communication and documents requested from the applicant. In accordance with these pillars, problematic areas and bottlenecks in public administration are determined and projects are commenced in order to reduce burdens and simplify procedures.
Projects were carried out on specific problematic areas and related more than one ministry’s field, for example, by-law on license for businesses’ openings, by-law on mining activities’ permits, improving effectiveness of policlinic services, licensing the private educational institutions, simplification of foreign trade transactions, enhancement of land registry and cadastre services, the simplification of the services in the land border gates, establishment of one-stop-shops in provinces etc… The Department has been currently implementing a project which aims to simplify procedures and to delegate authorities embracing all central government bodies.
Department for Administrative Development tries to reduce administrative burdens and simplify procedures depending on the principles indicated below: The public institutions should confide in statement as a principle, however, there must be rigid sanctions if inspections reveal false and misleading statement. The procedures should be completed in first application center if it is possible. If it is not possible the hierarchical levels in procedures should be minimized and the competence should be transferred to appropriate lower levels. Information obligations and documents demanded by public bodies should be revised strictly; forms must be simplified; same information should not be required repeatedly; public institutions should share information instead of getting from citizens or businesses. Electronic means which accelerate the procedures should be used widely. Duration for procedures should be limited by secondary legislations. Transactions carried out by different public authorities should be harmonized. Professional organizations and NGOs shall participate in preparation of legislations.
Besides, a new System of Public Service Standards has been introduced. This system will ensure public services finalized on time. It has a self control mechanism enabling citizens to complain to the supervisor. In this system, Citizens will know; which documents and information are requested how long it will take to complete the service contact information of supervisor whom s/he can complain
In this system, each public authority determines certain time period to finalize service and prepares a table including information above. This table shall be announced by the units providing service on the boards can be easily seen by the citizens, on the corporate websites and e-Government Website. The system aims to increase quality of public services and ensure that the public service concluded in determined time period. It is similar to Citizen Charters in Europe. This system is especially important for license and authorization applications. It will ensure to obtain licenses and certificates on time.
Reduction measures Administrative simplification and ICT technologies are the most commonly used instruments to reduce administrative burdens on citizens.
96 A project called “Reduction of Bureaucracy and Simplification of Procedures” aiming to reduce AB’s on citizens, help to take the pressure off and make life easier for citizens is in progress. Within the context of this project 170 regulations have been revised in 2009; In 72 services authority has been delegated to lower levels. 421 documents requested by authorities have been abolished. Notarized documents are no longer required in 215 different services.
Within the context of this project a new regulation setting general principles in public service delivery has been adopted. The authorities shall make all necessary administrative, technical and legal arrangements specified in this Regulation within six months after this Regulation is published. After adaptation process, only for 6 documents and activities (Birth Record Certificate, Residence Certificate, Criminal Records, Health Reports, Notarized Documents, Copies of Diploma, ID Cards etc…) selected; 1.013.045.000 TL (about $675 million USD) 733 tons paper 10.968 years time will be saved.
E-government projects are one of the top priorities of the government. Here is the list of implemented e-government projects:
. UYAP (National Judicial Network Project), . MERNIS (Ministry of Interior Centralized Population Management System), . VEDOP (Automation Project of Turkish Tax Offices), . YERELNET (Local Government Network), and . e-Declaration for Social Security
Current e-government projects are High Priority E-Government Projects TIME NECESSARY LEGAL CHANGES PROJECT TITLE RESPONSIBLE AGENCY (Months) Law Regulation 1. Online Vehicle Ministry of Internal Affairs 12 3 1 Registration 2. e-Criminal Ministry of Justice 6 2 2 Record 3. Online Ministry of Industry & Trade 12 2 1 Establishment of Firms 4. e-Appointment in Ministry of Health 6 1 1 Healthcare 5. e-Contracting Public Contracting Agency 8 1 1 6. e-Taxation in Ministry of Internal Affairs 9 - 1 Municipalities 7. Online Trial Ministry of Justice 9 8 2 Procedures 8. Consumer Portal Ministry of Industry & Trade 6 1 1 9. Culture Portal Ministry of Culture & Tourism 9 1 1 10. Foreign e- Undersecretary of Customs & 2 1 2 Trade Undersecretary of Foreign
97 Trade 11. e-Environment Ministry of Environment & 14 - 20 Permits Forestry TOTAL 20 33
In this context 20 acts and 33 regulations will be revised.
Life event measures
The main life events include birth, marriage and death. The main services connected to this life events are their registration, correction and update.
As for the services related with birth and death, there were really important administrative burdens on citizens. Citizen satisfaction surveys, SCM and other kind of qualitative studies have also revealed the problems in this area. The main problems could be listed as follows: . Disputes arising from identical names registered . Burden on citizens on the registration procedure . Slow and inefficient functioning of registration desks . Inability to share data with other public institutions and agencies . However, there has been significant progress to eliminate most of the during last 10 years. First of all, all the sevices concerning birth and death registration have been started to be given online after the year 2000. All Turkish citizens had been assigned an 11 digits Citizenship ID number on 28 October 2000. This was really a big step towards resolving problems arising from identical names, providing fast and efficient identification, registering all civil status events from the moment of birth and providing fast and efficient services to the users of public services by ensuring efficient exchange of identity information among public institutions and agencies. Also, with the introduction of the Citizenship Identity Number, the practices of different numbers issued by different institutions were abandoned.
The modernisation of civil registration system in Turkey culminated in 2000 with the introduction of the Central Civil Registration System or MERNIS, as is known by its abbreviations in Turkish. MERNIS is a centrally administered system where any changes in civil status are registered electronically in real time over a secure network by the 966 civil registration offices spread throughout the country. The information kept in the central database is shared with the public and private agencies for administrative purposes. The aim of the system is to ensure the up-to-datedness and secure sharing of personal information and therefore increase the speed and efficiency of the public services provided to the citizens.
MERNIS has become the backbone of the e-Government infrastructure in Turkey. Currently, the MERNIS database houses more than 130 million personal data files and (as of January 2009) more than 2000 public bodies are using the up-to-date data from the MERNIS database. The services provided by MERNIS are as follows: • Modernisation of civil registration services by transferring the civil registries into electronic form • Assignment of an unique Turkish Republic Identity Number to every Turkish national • Provision of on-line exchange of personal information using the identity numbers as identifiers • Provision of better demographic statistics using information technologies • Enabling easy, fast and secure delivery of public services to the users by sharing identity information with public sector institutions and agencies, thus reducing bureaucracy
98 United Kingdom
By Helen Begley (2008)
Policy Citizens’ time is not free, yet often the way public services are delivered assumes it to be so. The aim of the Service Transformation Agreement (STA) is to change public services so they more often meet the needs of people and businesses, rather than the needs of government and by doing so reduce the frustration and stress of accessing them. The result will be services that are better for the customer, better for front line staff and better for the taxpayer.
The direction of travel for Service Transformation was set out in the Transformational Government Strategy (November 2005) and Sir David Varney’s Review of Service Transformation (December 2006) which reported to the then Chancellor on how to embed Service Transformation in the Comprehensive Spending Review. The publication of the Service Transformation Agreement (STA), which underpins delivery of the whole new Public Service Agreement (PSA) frame work, now makes this agenda central to government’s plans for public service reform over the CSR period.
Service Transformation is about changing public services so they are tailored more to the needs of people and businesses. Its key aim is to create better public services which are easier for customers to access, more efficient for government to deliver and more successful in terms of policy outcomes. Service Transformation is linked closely with the practical delivery of Public Service Reform, the opportunities we are currently seeking to embed public engagement in the service design and delivery process, and the Prime Minister’s “personalisation” agenda.
The STA has four main objectives or principle elements - a set of (currently six) specific projects and areas for reform which not only give specific benefits in their own right but which also put in place frameworks and capabilities for wider service transformation. - two broad measures of progress on cutting avoidable contact and building better online services (to be supplemented later by a third on the delivery of face-to-face services) - Departmental Service Transformation Plans for each major delivery department - these were commissioned by the Chief Secretary to the Treasury last year and represent the agreed service transformation elements underlying individual departments’ spending plans and Departmental Strategic Objectives; - a broadly based programme of cultural and business change across the public sector.
Organisation The Cabinet Office coordinates overall delivery of the Service Transformation Agreement, although it is clear in the Agreement and elsewhere that most of the action, and most of the funding, rests with individual departments and agencies.
Measurement and reduction measures
99 The Service Transformation Agreement is not what we deliver so much as how we deliver. The real measure of success is therefore how well we achieve our ambitions across the PSA set. The PSAs are about real people - individuals whose needs and behaviours we need to understand and act on if we are to stand any chance of tackling the social and economic challenges of the future. Each project and deliverable will have its own progress and outcome measures. We do not want to undermine these in the Agreement, but have instead included two high level measures which are not ends in themselves but are intended to act as a litmus test for transformation. They are both measures of success and tests of our commitment:
Reducing "avoidable" contact This measure is closely linked with the major project on transforming our Contact Centres. It derives from the Varney Review recommendation that a performance management framework for contact centres be established to include a target of 50% reduction over the CSR 07 period of “avoidable contact” (based on the definition of avoidable as a contact which is duplicate, made in error or nugatory). By eradicating this type of valueless contact we not only tackling immediate customer access issues, but we are also forced to pay attention to what is happening across the whole of the service delivery operation.
We are drawing data from returns submitted voluntarily by public sector contact centres under the Performance Management Framework. As the reporting arrangements become bedded in and collection volumes increase we expect the definitions to become more consistent. The real key to this measure lies in establishing a solid baseline. We are therefore investing considerable effort with the departments and local authorities in getting the measurement systems and baselines right. A complementary measure on avoidable contact (NI14) is also included in the new local government indicator set and we are currently defining and testing an appropriate measurement and reporting process which will feed into the main data collection for the Service Transformation Agreement progress measure.
Rationalising websites The STA argues that government can “better manage customer online access to services by progressively moving e-services onto two websites where they can be presented and linked in ways which customers understand”. That aim is the driver of the Directgov and Businesslink.gov project which will make these sites the primary digital channels for government services for citizens and businesses respectively. It will be important to ensure that Directgov and Businesslink.gov are as complete as possible in terms of both content and transactional services. However this is hard to measure in any objective way and so (as a proxy) we will track the closure of sites whose functions have been taken on by Directgov or Businesslink.gov and which can, as a result, be shut down. Although closure is not itself the objective sites cannot be closed unless the content has been moved to Directgov, Businesslink.gov or (for policy and corporate information) a main departmental site. Here too our principal data source is from departmental returns – although we also have a master record of all authorised website names on the “.gov.uk” domain. We have agreements in place with departments detailing whether and when each of their own sites will move their content and subsequently close: overall this will reduce 764 departmentally-owned sites at the start of the exercise to 50 (94% reduction) by 2011. Those remaining will essentially be Direct.gov, Businesslink.gov and one corporate/policy site for each department, plus some cross-government sites for specialist audiences.
These two progress measures will give government a view across the public sector of progress being made towards a service economy which is slicker, more immediate, more convenient to the citizen
100 and less intrusive on their time. But in order to understand what this looks like to the citizen, the public sector needs to be able to follow and understand representative customer journeys through their various stages in accessing public services.
The technique of “customer journey mapping” is widely used in the commercial world and there are some excellent examples in public services. It enables a service provider to look at each step a customer takes towards completion of a task but from the point of view of that customer. Taking this viewpoint is critical for government because it exposes those steps which lie outside the immediate horizon but which hold part of the solution to streamlining the whole journey.
By its nature, customer journey mapping is qualitative. It is often complex, covering journeys which extend over long periods of time and which are often disjointed and sometimes ambiguous. But it is one of the best ways available to the public sector to understand what needs to be done to streamline a particular area.
The cross government Customer Insight Forum has provided guidance and a toolkit for customer journey mapping, drawing on best techniques currently in use. It now acts as a clearing house to ensure that good practice is shared and to help teams across government with responsibility for PSAs to understand how customer journey mapping can be used to improve outcomes for citizens.
In the commercial world better services lead directly to more loyal and satisfied customers. In the public sector the linkage is less straightforward. Very few citizens have a strong sense of what a “public service” is and, without anything to compare it with, find it hard to express a firm opinion of how satisfied they are.
Used appropriately customer satisfaction monitoring is a valuable tool, although it does require careful interpretation if it is not to mislead. Many parts of the public sector monitor customer satisfaction as part of their performance management regimes. At the moment, these activities are rarely linked or comparable, either within or across departments or agencies. This means that service delivery organisations are not able to compare their findings with peers and are missing opportunities for benchmarking and sharing learning.
The Customer Insight Forum has provided government with guidelines and a framework aimed at improving the comparability and consistency of customer satisfaction across government. It is now working with departments to help them to understand how good customer satisfaction measurement can lead directly to improved service delivery.
List of participants to the EPAN Learning group on reducing administrative burdens for citizens – December 2010
101 Postal website Country Last name First name Organisation Street City code Telephone number Fax number E-mail address http://www.bka.gv.at/ Austria Kallinger Michael Austrian Federal Chancellery Hohenstaufengasse 3 Vienna 1010 +43 1 53115 7112 +43 1 53109 7112 [email protected] Hintere Zollamtsstrasse http://www.verwaltungskostens Austria Niedermüller Theresia Federal Ministry of Finance 2b Vienna 1030 +43151433 502305 +43151433 5902305 theresia.niedermü[email protected] enken.at/English/_start.htm Belgium Goossens Dannie Chancery of the Prime Minister Hertogsstraat 4 Brussels B-1000 + 322 289 00 71 +322 289 0076 [email protected] Corner Mich. Karaolis and www.mof.gov.cy/papd Cyprus Alexandrou Maria Ministry of Finance Gr. Afxentiou Streets, Nicosia 1443 +357 22601521 +357 22602763 [email protected] Czech Ministry of Interior of the Czech http://www.mvcr.cz/sprava/mo Republic Fejtek Petr Republic Nam. Hrindu 3 Prague 4 140 21 + 420 974 816 267 00420 974 816 806 [email protected] derniz/indexen.html Rosenberg Christiansborg Slotsplads http://www.fm.dk/ Denmark Seiding Henrik Ministry of Finance 1 København K 1218 (+45) 33 92 40 06 [email protected] www.fin.ee Estonia Narip Karin Ministry of Finance Suur-Ameerika 1 Tallinn 15006 +372 611 3532 + 372 696 6810 [email protected] 00023 http://www.vm.fi/vm/en/01_mai Finland Rissanen Olli-Pekka Ministry of Finance P.O. Box 28 Helsinki Government + 358 9 160 32523 +358 9 160 33235 [email protected] n/index.jsp 00023 http://www.vm.fi/vm/en/01_mai Finland Nurmi Johanna Ministry of Finance P.O. Box 28 Helsinki Government +358 40 764 9885 +358 9 160 33235 [email protected] n/index.jsp Directorate General for State www.modernisation.gouv.fr France Pelletier Céline Modernisation, Ministry of Budget Rue de Bercy 139 Paris 75012 +33 1 5318 5586 [email protected] http://www.bundesregierung.d Germany Naundorf Stephan Federal Chancellery Dorotheenstrasse 84 Berlin D-10117 +49 3018 400 1360 +49 30 4000 1380 [email protected] e/buerokratieabbau http://www.ypes.gov.gr/ Greece Archontas Nikos Ministry of interior 15, Vas. Sofias Av. Athens 106 74 +30 213-13 13 13 6 +3 210 – 339 93 175 [email protected] Ministry of Ministry of Public Kossuth Lajos tér 2-4., III. http://www.kim.gov.hu/ Hungary Farkas Krisztina Administration and Justice em. 37. Budapest 1055 +36 1 795-1156 +36 1 795-0472 [email protected] http://www.pmo.is Iceland Sigurðardóttir Guðbjörg Prime Minister's Office Hverfisgötu 6 Reykjavík 150 +354 545 8470 +354 562 3177 [email protected] www.innovazionepa.it Department of Public Corso Vottorio Emanuele [email protected] Italy Paparo Silvia Administration 116 Rome 00186 +39-06-6899-1 www.innovazionepa.it Department of Public Corso Vottorio Emanuele [email protected] Italy Tardiola Andrea Administration 116 Rome 00186 +39-06-6899-1 Department of Public Corso Vittorio Emanuele II www.cnipa.gov.it Italy Favia Nicola Administration 116 Rome 00186 +39-0668997559 +39-0668997394 [email protected] State Chancellery of the Republic www.mk.gov.lv Latvia Glazkovs Janis of Latvia Brivibas blvd. 36 Riga LV-1520 + 371 67082 972 +371 67213 505 [email protected] www.vrm.lt Lithuania Liutkevičiene Rasa Ministry of the Interior Šventaragio g. 2 Vilnius LT-01510 +370 5 271 70 65 +370 5 271 89 15 [email protected] www.meu.gov.mt Malta Scerri Marisa Office of the Prime Minister National Road Blata l-Bajda +356 2599 2956 +356 2599 2972 [email protected] Ministry of Government http://www.regjeringen.no/en/d Norway Hovland Jon Administration and Reform P.O. Box 8004 Dep Oslo NO 0030 +47 222 44 806 +47 4681 658 [email protected] ep/fad.html?id=339
Poland Ksiezopolski Janusz Ministry of Economy Plac Trzech Krzyzy 3/5 Warsaw 00-507 +48 22 693 55 69 janusz. [email protected] Agency for Administrative Rua Abranches Ferrão n.º www.ama.pt Portugal Figueiredo Ana Sofia Modernisation 10, 3º G Lisbon 1600-001 +351 21 723 12 00 + 351 21 723 12 20 [email protected] Ministry of Interior and http://modernizare.mai.gov.ro Romania Ionut Vasilca Administrative Reform Revolution Square 1a Bucharest 010086 + 40 21 311 24 23 + 40 310 3562 [email protected] http://www.mfsr.sk/ Slovakia Niksova Nadezda Ministry of Finance Štefanovičova 5 Bratislava 817 82 +421 2 5958 2423 [email protected] http://mju.gov.si/ Slovenia Kodra Matija Ministry of Public Administration Tržaška cesta 21 Ljubljana 1000 +386 1 478 83 46 00386 1 478 83 31 [email protected] Spanish Agency for Evaluation of http://www.aeval.es/es/index.h Spain Ivanez Gimeno Jose Maria Public Policies, Quality of Services c/ Maria de Molina 50 3 Madrid 28070 +34 91 273 2619 + 34 91 273 2337 [email protected] tml Ministry of Presidency, http://www.map.es/index.html Spain Joaquín Acosta Aida Department of Better Regulation Ma. de Molina 50 Madrid 28071 +34 91273 22 47 + 34 91 273 23 98 [email protected] Swedish Agency for Public http://www.statskontoret.se/ Sweden Elmgren Claes Management Box 8110 Stockholm 104 20 +46 8 454 46 71 [email protected] The Ministry of the Interior and http://www.regeldruk.nl/algemen Netherlands Kootstra John Kingdom Relations Postbus 20011 Den Haag 2500 EA +31 70 426 7114 070 426 7600 [email protected] e-onderdelen/serviceblok/english The Ministry of the Interior and www.whatarelief.eu Netherlands Van Welij Thijs Kingdom Relations Postbus 20011 Den Haag 2500 EA +31 70 426 7487 +31 70 426 7600 [email protected] Bakanliklar / +90 0312 4188190 http://www.igb.gov.tr/Forms/De Turkey Ak Akın Office of the Prime Minister Basbakanlik Merkez Bina Ankara 06573 +90 312 4137698 Akin Ak [[email protected]] fault.aspx