The cycle of meetings designed to raise public awareness about new co-governance bill today continued with a gathering with local residents in the city of Berat. In his remarks, Prime Minister Edi Rama noted that the meetings aim at informing and raising the public awareness about two important aspects of the new piece of legislation that offers great opportunity to every citizen to receive real-time public services, without delays and long queues, but via their smart phones and computers, as well as the opportunity to set in motion a legal mechanism called co-governance.
The government head informed that every service window will be shut down starting January next year, ultimately putting an end to long queues, bribery and other corrupt practices in the country’s public delivery system.
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Thank you for your presence! The today’s gathering takes place as part of a series of meetings we have already launched together with the Director of the Agency for Dialogue at the Prime Minister’s office, a government agency tasked with managing the co-governance platform and the Head of the National Agency for Information Society, which is responsible for delivering public services via the online platform.
The goal of these meetings is to raise the public awareness and inform citizens about two important novelties that offer a significant opportunity to every citizen to receive various public services in a record-breaking time, without having to wait on long queues, without facing any delays and without having to leave their homes for most of the public services by using a smartphone or a computer and, on the other hand, promptly set a new legal mechanism in motion, namely the co-governance, which, from a process launched and consolidated during the previous term in office to assist citizen in obtaining various public services, has now been transformed into legislation due to enter into force as soon as it is returned to parliament following the absurd refusal by the President to sign it into law.
As far as public services, I would like to inform everyone that more than 1000 public services are now delivered to every citizen via the online platform e-Albania, with everyone having been provided the opportunity to access such services without having to walk out their homes at all. I would bring an example of the State Cadastre itself, one of the most sought and widely rumoured public service, and rightly so, as it has been a serious problem over the years; today nobody has to report in person at the service windows, but the application can be directly filed via the smartphone or a computer, and the State Cadastre Agency is then legally obliged to provide a reply and the required documentation within a legal deadline.
Other aspect within this entire new system is the fact that citizens will no longer be forced to report at various state offices in person in order for them to complete the file of required documents for a certain public service. In other words, if someone had to obtain a long list of documents before receiving a certain licence, certificate or authorization and he was asked to obtain this and that document at various offices, he or she will no longer have to do so. All it takes is simply filing an application via the online platform and all the required documents will be provided by the administration employees.
This would translate into a radical transformation of the citizens’ relation with the public services and state documents and this practically means every citizen will be granted to opportunity to put an end to all hardship they have been facing to date and they will no longer have to pay bribes in order to benefit a certain service. When a relevant state office fails to provide a reply on time, first the system allows the agency and the e-Albania platform themselves to find out any delays caused by the administration employees, but on the other hand every citizen will now also be provided the opportunity to immediately file a complaint with the co-governance platform and ask for the responsible official be held accountable and also receive the service they demand.
These are valuable also for another important reason and which is why we have embarked on this series of public awareness raising meetings, because starting next January we will start closing down all the service windows, meaning that such windows will no longer be physically operational. Citizens will no longer be forced to report at these service windows in person and wait on long queues, because our own experience and the experience of several countries that have turned out to be successful in delivering on these processes show that although the public services are available to everyone and can be received via the phone or a computer, citizens still opt to keep reporting at offices and such a trend could last for more many years. We can no longer afford encountering such a big deal between the state and the citizen and keep incurring a huge cost of nerve-racking and tormenting time and waste of money, which would imply bribery and other corrupt practices in exchange of public services.
The system to ultimately put an end to paperwork was actually in place for some time now, but it couldn’t become fully operational, because the legacy and the inherited trend prevailed over the fresh reality and therefore we were forced to do it drastically.
On a beautiful day, sending papers to the government building was banned and since that day a paper-free or paperless system became operational, with the state documents circulated electronically instead. It is in this aspect too that closure of the service windows will provide such a huge sense of relief and liberation from all of those who are used to stand behind the service windows over the years and look at the citizens’ pockets or dishonour the state by abandon workplace to drink a coffee or turn their back to the citizens who wait on long queues and communicate with the citizens inappropriately. They will no longer communicate with the citizens in person and instead a computer will stand in front of them and do the work they previously asked the citizens to do by reporting at various citizens to obtain and collect a huge stack of all sorts of documents for their files to complete.
All the files will be prepared by these workers, who will be also committed to maintain the online system operational.
The citizens’ relations with the state will now be established via the smartphone or a computer. It takes just an online application and everyone would receive an official reply and citizens currently receive a reply immediately via the phone or computer, while a number of services have yet to be provided via the online system and instead citizens are notified to report and withdraw the documents.
For example, if you can freely apply for a property ownership certificate with the State Cadastre today, you cannot receive the property title via smartphone or computer, but you have to report in person as soon as you receive notification to do so.
The work we are currently dealing with is precisely an effort to complete this cycle and make possible that such document is provided online too. Once the State Cadastre offices are closed, the document will be delivered via mail service. For this reason, we will shut down the State Cadastre offices somehow more gradually.
It is an epochal transformation.
It all takes just informing the public regularly over the fact that they should use a smartphone or a computer and forget the service windows. The entire citizen-state relationship is based on the online application only and if no reply is provided within a legal deadline, every applicant can file a complaint online and under the new co-governance law as a new legally-binding mechanism, every complaint should be received, handled and tackled in real time by the state employees and officials.
Indeed, the state now becomes the previously “influential friend” that everyone had to or was used to look for in order to solve a problem at the state offices.
The directors of the two agencies and a group of direct beneficiaries from the system we are talking about are together with us today and these individuals are local residents in Berat and I would like to thank them for coming to testify that the system works. And they were invited to attend not because of this meeting, but because they have received such a service earlier and I am really grateful to them for helping us to convey this message and tell people that the system works and all it takes for them is just embrace and embark on this path to eliminate any kind of barriers and any direct contacts with the state offices tasked with delivering public services, documents, licences, certificates, authorizations and every other official document.
I would first give the floor to the Director of the Agency for Openness and Dialogue at the Prime Minister’s office, who is also the director of the co-governance platform to highlight some elements on how this platform works, which, as I already said, has been turned into law after being approved by parliament and will be approved again as soon as included on the parliament’s agenda after being returned for further consideration by President for no reason of whatsoever.
