OREANDA-NEWS. October 13, 2010. The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine adopted two documents, which started the reform of administrative services in Ukraine, the Senior Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine Andriy Klyuyev said in an interview.

According to him October 11 the Government of Ukraine issued a decree establishing a working group whose mission is to qualitatively understand what administrative services currently exist and which of them are really required. The group was headed by the Senior Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine Andriy Klyuyev and his assigned deputies are the State Committee Chairman Michael Brodsky and the Deputy Minister of the Cabinet of Ministers a Jury Avksentiev.

In addition, the resolution "Some aspects of administrative services provision" was adopted, which provides that all fees collected for administrative services, will be delivered to the state budget. "Thus, any official is deprived of personal motivation to enter new extortions on citizens and business" - Andriy Klyuyev said.

According to the document, except the analysis of all existing enterprises and services they provide, the State Committee will continuously monitor their activities quarterly reporting to the Cabinet. The resolution also provides for separation of administrative services and business, establishing a list of administrative services, and is aimed at creating conditions for the principle of "one-stop shop" operation.

According to Senior Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine, today the government functioning new ideology is introduced, both central and local. He recalled that October 8 at the meeting of the Governmental Committee for the development of industries, research, and innovation policies he commissioned to prepare and submit for approval of the Cabinet of Ministers a draft law on the system of administrative services. He said that the law should set a clear framework for such services.

Relevant ideology will also be incorporated into the draft Administrative Procedural Code, which is currently being considered by the concerned executive. Besides that, the Cabinet is actively working on implementing the principle of "one-stop shop", Andriy Klyuyev said.

Changes in laws are not enough, the government plans to force officials to execute them, the Senior Vice Prime Minister underlined.

"Unfortunately the system of administrative services turned into a model of legalized extortion on businesses and ordinary citizens. Money taken in the form of various assessments, estimates, statements, excerpts, and other so-called services, and then often pumped into the pockets of officials" - Andriy Klyuyev said.

He said that the Government plans to drastically reduce the number of required administrative services. He noted that only those procedures which existence is justified will remain.

He also stated that the scale of transfer by the authority of powers on administrative (and public) services provision to the intermediary structures is huge. The Senior Vice Prime Minister is confident that these services should be provided free or at much lower rates. He gave the example that only for the documents for identification and registration of title to land, depending on the region, citizens are to collect from 7 to 19 different permits and conciliation documents.

"Significant number of payments has no other purpose likeminded money pumping away – these are the legalized schemes allowing the corrupt officials authorized to perform state functions to get huge incomes" - Andriy Klyuyev said. He noted that since the independence, Ukraine created thousands of intermediaries who collect money from citizens and businesses, resulting in unduly cost increasing of such services. According to the Senior Vice Prime Minister, there are four types of such intermediaries - government and utilities, charities and businesses.

Andriy Klyuyev said that very often people are pushed obliquely or even openly to use services of intermediaries. "These techniques are known: state agencies working time limiting, preparation of documentation time spanning, unreasonable increase of the number of required certificates and approvals for permits, normal consultations denying, uncomfortable documents application offices placing, queue artificially provoking, forms shortage creation. Most of our citizens face such examples every day. The Government will work to put an end to it" - Andriy Klyuyev said.

According to him, the reform ideology is to minimize the personal communication of citizens with the officials. "It is planned to maximize the use of mail and the Internet communication. In this case the opportunities for corruption are significantly reduced" - Andriy Klyuyev said.

He noted that the basis for creation in Ukraine of a single "electronic window" could be the Register of public and administrative services.

Today the Main Department of Civil Service fills in the Register. It contains more than 2 thousand services provided by executive bodies and local authorities in 49 areas of state control. The Register is freely available via the official website of MDCSU. Register now is available in test mode.

As a result, according to First Deputy Prime Minister, there could be the single web portal providing administrative services, through which citizens and small and medium-sized businesses can receive services online.

Reference:
According to the State Committee on Entrepreneurship, today there are 227 permits established by law. The number of permits imposed by ministries, departments and local governments is overwhelming.

Governments of different cadence have issued over 200 decrees with lists of paid services.

In general more than 150 laws and regulations now govern the whole area, what makes difficult to control it and what encourages corruption.

According to the State Committee on Entrepreneurship, annually only business losses are at more than 1 billion UAH. However, the real losses are in an order of magnitude higher – here we have to consider the budgets losses of all the levels and losses of ordinary citizens too.