Citizens Still Trapped to Act as “Messengers in Captivity” between Various Administrations

In the recent years, despite the investments made, the citizens are still forced to act as “messengers in captivity” among various administrations. Over 60 percent of the electronic services used in Bulgaria are related to issuing various certificates.

In the recent years, despite the investments made, the citizens are still forced to act as “messengers in captivity” among various administrations. Over 60 percent of the electronic services used in Bulgaria are related to issuing various certificates. The “end-users” of those services, however, are neither the citizens, nor the business, but rather the various administrations themselves. These are the comments the Chairperson of the e-Government State Agency (S.E.G.A), Rosen Zhelyazkov made on presenting to the business, the NGOs and the media the Concept for electronic governance development in Bulgaria until 2021.

The Concept shall provide the necessary grounds for the activities of the recently established Electronic Governance State Agency, pursuant to the Electronic Governance Act. By resolution of the Government dated 28 September, 2016, Rosen Zhelyazkov ahs been appointed a Chairperson of EGSA for a period of five years.

Every year the citizens, the business and employees of various administrations waste tens of millions of man-hours on issuing, obtaining, submitting in person and registering certification-related documents, the Chairperson of EGSA pointed out, highlighting the challenges to have been faced during the stage of introducing the electronic governance in Bulgaria in recent years. However, a considerable progress has been achieved in just two years, which has rendered the introduction of e-Government in Bulgaria highly realistic.

“All necessary factors to accomplish the process successfully are there - the legislation and required amendments to it, eliminating the most significant setbacks. Funding has been assured under the “Good Governance” Operational Program. More than 40 electronic services have been introduced in two years, which is 11% of all administrative services provided across the country. A Road Map has been elaborated and updated on the implementation of E-Governance for the period of 2016-2020”, Rosen Zhelyazkov pointed out.

Still the main challenges related to the introduction of e-Government in Bulgaria are the huge number of “services” and regulatory regimes the citizens and business face; the lack of liaison among the administrations; the multiple data collection processes, such data not being exchanged and used by the respective administration structures; the information and communication infrastructure and data are dispersed in over 2200 locations and server rooms, while less than 20% of them comply with the technical maintenance requirements.

Therefore the main priorities regarding the effective implementation of the E-Governance in Bulgaria shall be modernizing the approach to policy-making, including developing tools for collecting statistical information required for the operation of the administrations, the systems and processes, bringing the focus on the users, i.e. the citizens and the business.

“Bureaucracy has the property of self-replicating, therefore it is necessary to move the focus from the administration onto the users - the state administration exists in order to facilitate the citizens and the business, not the administration itself. It is necessary to reconsider and re-assess the existence of certain administrative processes, modes of operation and services which currently are in place for the sake of administrations instead of for the sake of the citizens and the business”, commented Rosen Zhelyazkov.

Another priority shall be introducing e-services “by-default”, including planning investments in providing certain services as electronic, based on the frequency of rendering them, designing the administrative processes based on the technological capacity and possibilities, not simply re-creating the “paper-based” versions of them in an electronic form, by providing access and usability of the e-services via all channels - web-based, mobile applications, self-service terminals and others.

“The implementation of the principle of one-off data collection and multiple use of data has been envisaged in the Electronic Governance Act as early as 2008, but has never been complied with, because the administrations do not have the necessary tools to meet this requirements in reality”, specified the Chairperson of EGSA. Therefore the activities shall have one more focal point, that being the transformation of the certification services into internal administrative services.

Establishing complex administrative services based on “life events” and “business episodes” will also have a significant impact on the citizens and the business. Such services shall be related to purchasing and use of vehicles, which currently requires to be “provided services” by 9 different organizations; another example can be launching a new business in the country, which now requires citizens and business entities to “use the services” of 5 to 9 different organizations.

E-participation - direct participation of citizens and business in shaping the policies and improving the regulatory documents, is another underlying priority. Introducing public discussions on strategic and regulatory documents on-line and implementing the electronic distance voting based on pilot, test and production stages shall also be a main element of the activities of the Electronic Governance State Agency.

The Agency shall work on the priority, elaborate and implement procedures related to electronic public procurement.

The Chairperson of EGSA emphasized, that the experience of other EU member-states has shown, that the introduction of electronic public procurements can save over 30% of the costs to Contracting Authorities, speeding up the processes of carrying out the procurements, decreasing the level of corruption and, at the end of the day, assuring much greater level of protection to the public interest.

The State Agency shall also work on standardizing the processes related to assigning public procurement contracts, by defining policies for minimum and maximum allowable technical requirements for certain ICT-asset classes, depending on their purpose; the Agency shall also work on elaborating standard technical assignments related to the most frequently purchased type of assets; elaborating standardized templates for public procurements documentation and bids and transition to electronic public procurements of purchasing ICT-assets by the administrations.

The information security, cyber-security and cyber-sustainability form an underlying and integral part of all remaining priorities. EGSA shall work on the implementation of security and protection measures against malicious attacks, incidents and natural disasters; protection against DDoS attacks (attacks of the “Service denied” type); protection of personal and sensitive data of citizens and business; protection against unauthorized access and leakage of personal and sensitive data; protection against unauthorized access to data of administration employees; providing the possibility for citizens to check and be informed who, when and to what purpose will access their data, as well as a number of other aspects.

The Concept has envisaged measures on the implementation of the e-Governance in Bulgaria. Among the short-term priority measures projects on the redesign and upgrade of primary key registers have been highlighted, such as the ESGRAON, Register of addresses, Trade Register, Property Register, Motor Vehicle Register and others; the provision and upgrade of key national systems such as those of the National Revenue Agency, Customs Agency and the Public Procurements Agency. In the short run, work is to be done on finalizing the implementation of the underlying technological “unlocking factors” on effective e-Governance, i.e. Electronic authentication; open primary registers, authentic data sources; machine-readable electronic documents (not scanned paper documents); electronic signature without technological limitations and others.

The Concept on the development of electronic governance in Bulgaria also includes projects on e-Governance until 2020 with measures on the transparency of e-governance, mechanisms for coordination and sharing of information, as well as providing information and cyber-security and cyber-sustainability. The tools and resources required to achieve the objectives have been provided in detail and well reasoned in the concept, including the expected benefits and effects resulting from the implementation of the measures on introducing the e-governance.

In its activities, the Electronic Governance State Agency shall keep to the standards for maximum publicity and openness, assured the Chairperson of the Agency, Rosen Zhelyazkov.

The Concept on Elaborating the e-Government in Bulgaria until 2021 has been published under the “About the Agency” section.