Steps to eliminate excessive bureaucracy

Government plans to reduce bureaucracy in public administration.

Roxana Vasile, 25.02.2016, 14:42

“The paper shredding committee” is the name of a project to cut paperwork in the administration launched on Wednesday by Romania’s government. The project also saw the launch of a platform entitled maisimplu.gov.ro, where citizens can share their experiences from their interaction with the authorities. No sooner was the website open than complaints started to pour in. Some of these complains refer to the large number of documents required to obtain building permits, to the fees charged for issuing identity cards, to the requirement for legalised copies of documents with unlimited validity that are already in the system and the fact that revenue stamps are required for almost any form of official documents.

Bureaucracy has been a hot topic in Romania for more than two decades, but the state has been unable to wage an efficient battle against this phenomenon, which has affected both society and the business environment. The “excessive power of the administration”, as bureaucracy is defined in the Romanian dictionary, has been wasting the time, money and energy of millions of people, who are thus forced by a slow and outdated system to interact with too many state institutions.

Prime minister Dacian Ciolos has admitted that Romania sometimes looks like “a land of the absurd”: “Women who have just given birth have to submit three different files. An unemployed person has to pay around 30 lei to obtain the documents allowing him or her to receive the unemployment benefit. The alternative is for people simply to submit an application and for the administrative bodies to obtain the information they need directly, through the interconnection of information systems.”

In the opinion of the prime minister, citizens should not have to knock on every door themselves, but the administration should use instead the information systems connecting the various administrative bodies, systems which cost millions of euros and which have often not even been put into operation.

Prime minister Dacian Ciolos also talked about the principles on which the planned bureaucratic simplification is based: “First of all, an institution should require the needed information from citizens only once, and then use the data base to access it again. Secondly, we have to organise the electronic transfer of data among institutions. Thirdly, we have to replace the use of legalised documents, where possible, with self-declarations which would cut unnecessary costs and paperwork, and even eliminate documents and procedures which are no longer justified and which can be replaced by digital procedures.”

Romanians are among the most stressed Europeans. Bureaucracy is partly to blame, and reducing it would make life easier for many.