Can there be good administration without citizens’ legal right to it?

Service delivery reforms cannot get you far enough

Co-operation of the European Union with the Instrument of Pre-Aaccession region, as well as the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) area, has led to a 2-gear approach where those countries interested in the EU membership are dictated to a significant extent the solutions to their public administration reform through required adherence with the SIGMA Principles of Public Administration, while the approach to the ENP area has been less prescriptive. In one specific area, namely the citizens’ right to good administration, the difference is perhaps the most pronounced. One of the clear instructions to the IPA countries has been to develop the law on general administrative procedures (LGAP). 

From a historical perspective, countries of the ex-Yugoslav tradition have had such a piece of legislation since the 1930-s, while in Albania this has had to be put into place just recently. In contrast, Turkey as the remaining IPA country has never had such a law, but nevertheless has granted citizen rights to good administration by Constitution. However, its Ombudsman Office has recently committed to developing a Manual on Good Administration, not dissimilar to that of the European Ombudsman Code of Good Administrative Behaviour. Apart from this yet rather embryonic initiative Turkey is a different story altogether.

So instead of looking to the IPA countries, let us turn now to what the European Union calls its Neighbourhood Policy Countries. Many of those also have delved onto the road of improving service delivery to their citizens. Countries in the Western Balkans who have the EU accession perspective in mind, have all by now introduced or updated laws on general administrative procedures in order to grant citizens explicit rights to good administration. Principles, such as protection from excessive length of procedures, need to explain the citizens the legal basis on which a decision was taken or give reasons behind the decision in their case, or how a decision can be challenged etc., give citizens a legal guarantee that these rights can be upheld in the court, which is potentially a powerful mechanism to exercise these rights compared to, for example, filing a complaint to a service provider. How about strengthening the citizen right to good administration without having such a legislative framework in place? How far is it possible and feasible? Let us look at two country examples which have embarked on the road to improved service delivery, but not yet there to have guaranteed rights to the citizens in legislative terms. We can nevertheless try to predict which turn the events might take.

Ukraine and Jordan - so different and still quite alike

The two countries share the same situation in that historically the citizen rights to good administration, however declarative, have not been upheld through any specific norms. There is no LGAP, nor contain special laws exhaustive provisions to protect citizen rights. Administrative courts in Jordan have started to deal with citizen-related cases only recently, and awareness is low, while the dedicated ombudsman institution was abolished and its functions transferred to the Anti-Corruption Office. In Ukraine, in contrast, administrative courts serve citizens and business in cases against the government and ombudsman enjoys relatively strong position as an independent institution. These mechanisms, while important, still leave much to wish for due to far from perfect capacities of these two institutions to deal with the number of complaints, but also due to lack of awareness of such mechanisms among population. 

However, in general terms citizen-centric administrative service provision is a Government priority in both Jordan and Ukraine alike. That, in essence, entails administrative simplification, sometimes conducted through re-engineering, which means amending the legislation in order to eliminate unnecessary procedures and requirements that would be obstacles in digitalised and interoperable information systems. One source of pressure has been a realisation that a country’s business climate, witnessed through its position in Doing Business ranking, is far from being attractive to foreign investors. From an another angle, corruption/wasta is excessive and not easy to curb, while digitalisation of processes is one of the means to cut off human interaction and therefore chances for corruption. 

Moreover, in digitalisation see Governments a possibility to come closer to the citizens without necessarily changing the fundamental concept of citizen’s position vis-a-vis the government. In neither of the countries have tools to ‘put the citizen in the centre’ been widely practiced. Digitalisation is rather a means to do things better for the citizen, not with the citizen. Advanced citizen engagement tools, such as co-design or service prototyping and regular user testing, have not made yet to the policy instrumentarium. Also business community representatives have complained that the real deficiency of the government is its unwillingness or lack of proper procedures to genuinely take outside perspectives on board while discussing policy options. Initial results from improved service delivery therefore are also from the area of digitalisation of individual services rather than whole complex of services, based on more citizen-oriented ‘life events’ concept. No doubt, service delivery has improved in both countries, but the real question is if that can stand alone or even replace genuine rights of the citizens to good administration?

The answer is ‘of course not’. Take an example of traffic violations. In Jordan, traffic cameras as anywhere else detect violators of speed limit and as a consequence, a fine is due to be paid. However, the decision on the violation is not sent or any other way handed over to the violator, instead the violations are rather frequently only to be found out when an annual car registration fee is due to be paid. Then will the owner also find out the number of traffic violations and the amount due. The trouble is that in such circumstances there is now way to appeal the decision. According to the European tradition, that would clearly go against several principles of good administration, such as the ones referred to above. 

Ukraine has embarked on the road to develop the code on general administrative procedure by establishing a working group and progressing with discussing the concept of such code. However, for them it is also already a second attempt. On the first one it was not widely shared view of the administration that there is a need for it. A most vocal argument was that the Law on Administrative Services already covers the basic principles on how the citizens should be served. However, Ukraine certainly wants to make an effort to adhere to the European principles of public administration, having EU accession perspective in mind.

What could be a possible way for Jordan? Obviously, there is no external pressure, nor internal preparedness, starting from the legal system and ending with general awareness of a need for such an act. Perhaps Egypt could serve here as an example. Under the leadership of ERRADA, a special body mandated to improve business climate, they started - with the help of SIGMA - from an analysis of sectoral legislation and related procedures, such as those associated with issuance of permits, and ended up with simplifying and rearranging such sectoral legislation, also introducing some principles of good administration while amending the legal acts. In the next phase, they produced the Guide on Good Administrative Procedures, explaining the main principles and the ways they could be introduced into any sectoral legislation. Using the manual and a good practical example as awareness raising tools may be a viable strategy as an alternative to a ‘big bang’ approach of coming up with the idea of introducing the LGAP at once. 

Now that the new Government of Jordan is in place and there is once again a dedicated Minister of Public Sector Development, perhaps that could be a sizable enough a challenge worthy of betting all the political capital on it. Citizens would certainly have even more to win than from digitalisation of services.

Blogging from Your Wix Blog Dashboard

On the dashboard, you have everything you need to manage your blog in one place. You can create new posts, set categories and more. To head to your Dashboard, open the Wix Editor and click on Blog > Posts.

Blogging from Your Published Site

Did you know that you can blog right from your published website? After you publish your site, go to your website’s URL and login with your Wix account. There you can write and edit posts, manage comments, pin posts and more! Just click on the 3 dot icon ( ⠇) to see all the things you can do.

#bloggingtips #WixBlog