Administrative reform and the introduction of e-services will have priority in the work of Deputy PM Rumyana Bachvarova and her team. This has become clear at a briefing on Monday.

 “There is the need for them to be coordinated in a way that ensures the results of their conduct”, she said. “The state administration is the basis for providing a service to the citizens and these services should gradually and quickly be made electronic, which is associated with the concept of e-governance. This is an answer to a basic priority of our government - ensuring transparent policies and the achievement of an open government.”

In the words of the Deputy Prime Minister in coalition policy and administrative reform, currently employees amount to 120,000 and the budget for their maintenance until the end of the year was reduced by 10%. The numerical limitation of the administration should not be an end in itself, but the result of a series of other efforts, Bachvarova says. We will work for a modern administration aimed at the citizens and businesses to solve their problems. The Deputy Prime Minister recalled that 2,312 administrative services and over 900 regulatory regimes are active in Bulgaria, but only 13 percent are electronic. In practice, more than 60 percent of transactions for 2013 are for provided certification services, whose end users are not citizens and businesses but rather other administrations. Therefore, pending is a full audit of administrative services and registers.

A highlight in the administrative reform will be assessing the impact of legislation. Deputy PM Bachvarova commented that every day an average of 2.5 pieces of legislation undergo changes, and gives examples:

"The most often changing rules are the Social Security Code - 61 times from 2007 until now, the Health Insurance Act - 47 times. The Healthcare Act has undergone 40 amendments and the Tax Procedure Code - 37. Frequent changes in legislation harass the management processes, but also load the people who have to work in this environment."

The Deputy Prime Minister said that she relied on the partnership of the MPs in the National Assembly and stressed that following the introduction of mandatory legislation impact assessment, a number of countries report a 40% reduction in the number of new laws and better legal regulation. It became clear that for the government it is also important to include civil society organizations and businesses in shaping policies and making managerial decisions.

Deputy PM Bachvarova informed that during the first two months in power of the current government a roadmap for the implementation of the Strategy for Administrative Reform 2015-2020 has been developed and approved and it has also prepared for public discussing the roadmap for e-Government by 2020. She said that the program that the government is to adopt on Wednesday will cover a wide range of measures.

"You see how actively our colleagues in key sectors are working. They have already announced measures that they take and shape their concept of the necessary reforms in healthcare, justice, and education. This requires coordination, which will not end with the adoption of the program. In the Development Council, which we identified as the main body, solutions will be sought as well as the positions of the government and its supporting parties. There will be the opportunity to discuss topics that individual ministers offer and that are not part of the program. If any decision is taken, it will be entered in it," said Deputy Prime Minister Rumyana Bachvarova.

English Rossitsa Petcova