New year 2020 marked the start of a new digital revolution in the delivery of public services in Albania.
In just few minutes online on a personal computer or a smartphone, every citizen and business entities would be eligible to benefit public services by accessing e-albania.al, as part of the digital government concept aimed at improving public service delivery, from making data-driven decisions to enacting evidence-based policies, from ensuring greater accountability and transparency within government to building greater public trust. The process will help the public sector organisations deliver efficient, cost-effective public services that are responsive to the needs of citizens and small businesses in particular and businesses as a whole.
Prime Minister Edi Rama, accompanied by the Minister of Finance and Economy Anila Denaj, saw how the new transforming system operates at the National Business Registration Centre, which now allows every citizen and business activity to apply from their own homes or business offices for any public service via the e-Albania portal. The window centres will stay open as long as they would be assisting citizens and business representatives to receive a range of online public services and they will eventually cease working, eliminating bureaucracy and long wait times to be provided with relevant documents and relieving the overwhelming burden of the unnecessary procedures.
“With the new system in place, we today offer some 114 services that will now be delivered online. There are currently some 152,000 applications from the registry and some other 11,000 applications for the customers’ registration. The online service delivery will save a total of 3159 working days. Some 248 documents will be eliminated. We think this system represents a great step forward also in terms of meeting the business demands, also to consider internally all the needed, but not indispensable documents,” the Minister of Finance and Economy Anila Denaj said.
“From now on, the specialists at the institutions tasked with public service delivery will merely offer assistance instructing every applicant what to do in order to benefit public services. This would be the case for all registration and licensing services. Likewise, we have made available a window centre tasked with delivery of all electronic stamping services, which include a total of 83220 services,” Director General of the National Business Registration Centre Pranvera Fagu said.
PM Rama, addressing a group of citizens who were attending the launch of the new online service delivery system at the National Business Registration Centre, noted that in addition to time-saving and provision of cost-effective public services, the new system will also cut a number of official documents that will now be provided by the state institutions themselves.
“From now on, you will be able to do this job without reporting at the Centre. It just takes few minutes to access e-Albania website and file your application and from today on you will no longer be forced to provide whole files with state documents, because whole this paper work should be now carried out by the Business Registration Centre itself. The same goes for other public services, so you should just lodge an application and upload few personal documents only, including bank statements or documents that can be individually received from the private sector organizations, but you will no longer be forced to provide certificates and other documents that are issued by state offices. The system would make it very easy for each and every one of you. You will then receive a response within a very short time. The registration takes just few minutes to complete,” the Premier noted.
On the other hand, the government head also announced that all existing window centres should cease operating in two months’ time in a move to eventually transform the entire public service delivery system in Albania.
“The countless documents that citizens should provide represent a serious problem to citizens as they trigger stress and long delays within the public administration. The window centres will continue to assist citizens on how to use the online system over the next one or two months, then these windows will eventually close down. It would certainly be somehow hard at the beginning, but people will start realizing this is the most fantastic way as they will no longer have to take the trouble to come over here and stand in queue as if at the train station. This should end and it is totally possible that this ends once and for all. One should understand it is time to maximally simplify this kind of procedures and cut that whole range of documents that people are asked to provide, a mountain of file cases just to register a business entity,” the Premier said.
The Minister of Finance and Economy Anila Denaj noted that systems to deliver public services online are becoming operational in other institutions under the authority of the Ministry of Finance. “The Social Insurance Institute is currently applying same procedures and every interested individual or business entity are being assisted to complete the online application for the required documentation,” Finance Minister said.
