The cycle of awareness-raising meetings on the new law on co-governance continued in the north-western city of Shkodra today, with the Prime Minister Edi Rama highlighting the tremendous transformation of the public service delivery system, which represents a new reality, totally liberated from burden of the bureaucratic obstacles.
The new bill is designed to turn co-governance from a good will mechanism into a legally-binding mechanism.
The government head noted that citizens have now available a new Albania in terms of public services provided to them.
* * *
Thank you for taking the trouble to attend this meeting! We have come together today to go on with a series of awareness raising and informative gatherings to let every citizen know about a huge transformation of the public service delivery system, when it comes to obtaining various official documents, certificates and licenses. It is necessary for every citizen to learn and understand the system as a new reality already there to be used by them and ultimately avoid all the inherent obstacles, which had become a continued serious problem to the citizens whenever reporting to a state office to apply for a certain public service in the past 30 years.
I am referring to the obstacles standing on the way of citizens when applying for a public service in the past, but these obstacles have yet to totally be removed and removing them previously used to be a matter of the past, but it is now a matter of the present, as around 95% of the services delivered by the state to its citizens, who report at the state offices to obtain a certain official document, are now delivered via their smartphones or computers. 95% of the public services!
It is about all sorts of services provided to all categories. Only 5% of the public services are not available online, because one has to necessarily report in person, including application for a new passport or an ID card as every applicant should leave their fingerprints, or certain other services for which physical presence is needed and which are basically not everyday life services. On the other hand, all the everyday life services are now delivered via online with citizens no longer having to walk out their houses. It takes just a smartphone or a computer and those who can’t afford or lack skills to use one of them can address the nearest office to ask for help and file a required application for this wide range of public services.
Such a progress would allow us to shut down all the service counters next year. It is actually a bold decision as it could also trigger confusion initially, yet it is an unavoidable one in order to guide citizens towards the new service delivery system, relieving them from all the burden of stress, bribes and tormenting time wasting while waiting on long queues that everybody already knows.
With the public services delivered and available online, the service counters will be closed and no offices will be available for anyone to knock on their doors as such a knock will be directly forwarded to the right online address, where the entire process will take place within the public administration. The service delivery system will be monitored online and all officials tasked with public service delivery will be under constant oversight so that none of them would be able to blame someone else or shun responsibility for failure to provide real-time reply to every citizen and, on the other hand, no citizen will be able to complain randomly and claim that “one has to pay tips in exchange of a certain service” and stuff like that. Such sporadic cases can certainly happen as they are not a product of fantasy, but the new online system marks a major turning point also in terms of the fight against corruption within the public administration and in terms of the relationship between the citizens and the public administration. In addition to that, with one aspect being that of the services provided by the administration – a wide range of over 1000 various public services provided via the e-Albania platform that everybody already knows because of the pandemic that hit the country – the other aspect includes the new law, which because of the President’s irrationality, has been returned to parliament, but will be adopted totally unchanged, and it is designed to turn co-governance from a mechanism of good will into a legally-binding mechanism, implying that one a citizen applies for a certain service and the service is not delivered on time or within a legal deadline as stipulated by law, the citizen has the right and the opportunity to exercise his or her right by reporting the case via Albania we want platform.
Any denunciations reported by the citizens would be tackled legally, when the citizen is found right, because this can’t always be the case as one may not be legally entitled to something, and the responsible officials will face sanctions.
The new law stipulates two sorts of sanctions. The sanction has been always into force, both criminal or administrative sanctions to be imposed on all of those who are found to have hindered a citizen intentionally or because of their incompetence and a financial sanction that is stipulated by the new legislation for the unjustly caused delays in providing a reply and the responsible public administration employees and officials will face financial sanctions for the damage they have caused.
Moreover, I think it would be appropriate for the head of the National Information Society Agency (NISA), as the relevant agency running the e-Albania platform and as the agency that has been at the forefront of this transformative effort and digital revolution.
The digital revolution is underway, as the application phase has been resolved, but a solution has yet to be found for the service delivery online only. For example, one is no longer obliged to report in person at the State Cadastre offices for him or her to apply for a service and that’s why the service counters at Cadastre offices will be shut down. This way none of the middlemen or other deceitful individuals, who tempt citizens to solve their problems through them, will have the opportunity to keep doing so, but the issue is that we still have to find a solution and forward a property ownership certificate or a legalization permit as citizens are still obliged to obtain it in person.
What we are doing now is that we have given a fresh impetus and an additional fund to the full digitalization process of the State Cadastre and we are seeking to make sure that the property ownership certificate is forwarded via the phone or the computer within this term in office. This way we will make sure that nobody would have to report in person or communicate with the employees working in the state offices. It will take just a minute for everyone to file an application and they will receive the document in just 60 seconds once the applicant has also settled the payment for the required service. This is a future phase, but even during this stage nobody has to report in person to the State Cadastre offices to file their application. Applications will be filed online only and this is the reason why the service application counters at the State Cadastre will be closed.
This is the reason why we are holding these meetings and tell citizens this is new Albania in terms of delivery of the public services to them. Finally, I would also point out the fact that every additional document will be provided by the public administration employees and citizens will no longer be obliged to report at various institutions to obtain the rest of the documents.
Under the new system, all the documents that the citizens had to obtain from various state offices, from now on it is the administration workers, the ones who will carry out the entire paperwork and secure all the required documents for the citizens, by obtaining them from the digital systems of other state institutions. So, nobody will have to provide a certificate of criminal records, but the office tasked with conducting this process will obtain the document from the respective office.
And this is not a future plan, but a nowadays reality that everyone should take advantage of. Taking notice of experience in other countries, we know pretty well that if we delay the process and let it be a process until everyone is convinced that these services are delivered via the smart phone or the computer and let the service counters operate, the process would never be finalized. Therefore we are going to close down the service counters throughout Albania. It is really as simple as that. Whoever applies for a public service, they will receive them via their smartphone or computer and whoever lacks a phone or a computer or lacks the skill to use them, they can report at the post office, at the nearest administrative unit to file an application. Every citizen also can address the ADISA offices that operate across the country and provide such services. However, these offices will cease operating and will no longer provide such services, but instead it will provide information on how to gain access and obtain such services.
This was the information I wanted to share with you and everyone else watching us, while a group of citizens who have already used this system have joined us today to testify to the fact that the system operates and works properly and it is not a coincidence that these citizens belong to different age groups. This is because many claim that retired people are unable to file their applications online. This is not true at all. Retired people access the e-Albania portal regularly. I don’t know whether they have learned to use it independently or it is their nieces or nephews accessing the platform and filing the applications for them, but the fact is that they access the e-Albania platform regularly.
E-Albania platform is today the state’s door, a single door available on your smart phones and nobody has to knock on other doors and report at every office in particular and be told to report again a day later.
The state’s door is open 24/7 and it takes just a click to access the online portal, file an application and the public services are available. This is the right system!
