Outsourcing administrative services from the state sector is crucial

Mr. Dimiter Kalchev, Minister of State Administration

Dimiter Kalchev was born in 1945. He graduated the Moscow Academy of Economy in Industrial Management. Specialized in Municipal Finance Management in North Carolina (USA) and Development of the Association of Municipalities in Washington.

He was director of Credit Bank and deputy director of Postbank. 1981-1986 he was deputy manager and general manager of companies in Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. In November 1995 he was elected mayor of Ruse Municipality. Since April 1996 he is a member of the Executive Board of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. In the period 1996-2000 he was chairman of the National Association of Municipalities in Bulgaria. 1998-2000 he was vice president of the working group on regionalism at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg.

He is fluent in English and Russian, and has some command of Arabic and German.

He is married and has one child.

Mr. Minister, what did the government and the administration achieve in introducing electronic services in 2004? Was the traced policy concerning electronic government carried out and what are the tasks for 2005?
Eight kinds of administrative services for the citizens and businesses are already a fact. An electronic port of the government of Republic of Bulgaria was established, there are links to all electronic services, some of which were developed by more than one institution. Apart from the programs for filing VAT tax forms and profits tax forms, work is going on on the other kinds of taxes and I hope that from mid-2005 these electronic services will be available. I must point out the projects of the Civil Register for Administrative Services and the National Insurance Institute, the Ministry of Labor and Social Policies for looking for a job. In the so-called strategy for realization of an electronic government or providing Internet services for the citizens and businesses all ministries and institutions did what was required.

I think greater attention should be given to improving the quality of administrative services at local and regional level – it is not accidental that the remarks of the European Commission regarding the administrative reform are targeted mainly there. In 2005 our efforts, the pilot projects we are implementing in the field of electronic government, should be focused in this direction. In my opinion, it will not be difficult, because in more than 150 municipalities function one-desk services, which means they can be automatically uploaded to the port of the respective municipality or regional administration. We renewed the agreement with UNDP for continuation of the work of the joint center, operating at the Council of Ministers and financed jointly with UNDP. There is mutual will with these funds, and the resources received under various donation agreements, to render assistance exclusively for the services at local and regional level: local taxes and fees, all municipality services such as civil registration, birth certificates, death certificates, heir certificates, etc. Minimum eight or ten kinds of services, which I think we can implement through these pilot projects by mid-year.

So by the end of 2005 we’ll have covered the 25 compulsory services for the citizens and businesses. Definite progress is also marked in the access to Internet services. According to official statistics, in 2004 about 60 thousand personal computers were sold in Bulgaria. The forecast for 2005 is 100-200 thousand by estimates of the organizations dealing with trade in and import of computer equipment. This gives hope that the access to electronic administrative services will expand sufficiently.

Secondly, this is done through the Ministry of Transport and Communications – the so-called service centers organized at post offices will be available to citizens and companies which do not have computers. And last but not least, the campaign under the aegis of the ministers of finance and of transport and communications for massive supply of computers to the secondary and higher schools. The rise of the standard of living, of people’s prosperity, which we observe in the last 1-2 years, and the even higher forecasts for the next one, show that this will be a steady tendency and we will achieve a percentage higher than 25%, which is considered the minimum required for an electronic government to work efficiently.

You are deputy chair of the Committee for Combat of Corruption with the Council of Ministers. How will the new services have a preventive effect?
The answer is very clear. Where equipment separates the administrators and the recipients of administrative services, it is a sure guarantee that corruption pressure will drop. This is another role of the electronic government, besides faster and quality services. In countries like Great Britain and Germany, where this minimum list of 25 indicative services is implemented, there is a drastic reduction of corruption influence on the part of those who provide the administrative services.

You are also one of those who strongly support the idea of outsourcing the services, which the state administration presently does. Apart from recognizing the anticorruption effect of this step, what was done in 2004? Was a political decision taken for which services these procedures will be undertaken?
At the last meeting of the Council on Administrative Reform, chaired by Vice Premier Plamen Panayotov, it was not only announced but concrete steps were made towards outsourcing or taking administrative services out of the state sector by setting up state companies and enterprises or transferring these services to the regional and local authorities. This is a hard process in the beginning, because we still see certain cautiousness, not to say downright resistance. There are examples of very good practices – in countries, such as Austria, in some three years the state administration was cut by 30%. This shows that in small countries like ours outsourcing is quite possible and this is the only way to restrict our state administration. We are often criticized that it is too large, that we unnecessarily expand it. Under many of the new laws, with which our legislation is adapted to the European, new structures are set up, e.g. a migration service with the Ministry of the Interior, a new Agency for State Contracts, which means new staff. The way to reduce the administration, or at least maintain it in certain reasonable limits, is to assign services to the private sector, establish new state companies or one-man companies. This is what is being done at the moment. True, the first steps are timid. The assigned activities are auxiliary, not primary, but nevertheless these initial steps should be admired and we must trust that in 2005 more serious steps will be taken.