Public Decision-Making Transparency (LT0013)

All draft legislation is made public (www.lrs.lt). Reorganisation of the system of the authorities overseeing economic operators has reduced preconditions for corruption as a result of lower administrative and supervisory burden. Reduced motivation for illegal payments in the field of healthcare. Improved procedures for the provision of administrative and public services and for their administration by increasing the transparency and effectiveness of public services; improved system for civil servant selection, career, service, training and evaluation. Training of legislative drafters on evaluation of draft legislation considering the aspect of anti-corruption, consultations given to legislation drafters on anticorruption aspect in the evaluation of draft legislation

Commitment 7. Public Decision-Making Transparency

Commitment Text:

Initiative 4: corruption prevention, transparency promotion

Area: To reduce the scale of corruption

Responsible authority: Ministry of Interior, Special Investigation Service

Action: to ensure publicity and transparency in public decision-making, enhance public access to draft legislation.

Expected outcome:

1. All draft legislation is made public (www.lrs.lt).
2. Reorganisation of the system of the authorities overseeing economic operators has reduced preconditions for corruption as a result of lower administrative and supervisory burden.
3. Reduced motivation for illegal payments in the field of healthcare.
4. Improved procedures for the provision of administrative and public services and for their administration by increasing the transparency and effectiveness of public services; improved system for civil servant selection, career, service, training and evaluation.
5. Training of legislative drafters on evaluation of draft legislation considering the aspect of anti-corruption, consultations given to legislation drafters on anti-corruption aspect in the evaluation of draft legislation.

[Emphasis added]

Responsible institution: Ministry of Interior, Special Investigation Service

Supporting institutions: Not specified

Start date: 2014.....................   End date: 2016

Commitment aim:

This commitment aims to increase transparency in public decision-making processes and lists a range of outputs with widely varying degrees of specificity and unclear links between various milestones. The IRM researcher believes that the commitment was developed in response to low levels of trust in government institutions and high corruption perception levels (with a score of 61/100, Lithuania ranks 32nd in the Corruption Perception Index 2015). It addresses a number of transparency and anti-corruption issues in various fields, such as health care, business administration, legislative transparency, and capacity of legislative drafters. While experts interviewed recognise these issues as very important, the milestones in the commitment are a set of fragmented actions, rather than a strategic reform package.

Status

Midterm: Limited

The commitment had limited completion status at the midterm report. It included a number of vaguely connected milestones with varying levels of specificity and lacked information regarding target audiences of specific actions (not defining “legislative drafters,” for instance).

The government had taken substantive steps to reduce administrative burdens by developing a plan to reduce the number of business monitoring institutions, among other things. However, the lack of specificity and indicators in the language of the milestone makes it difficult to determine whether the milestone has been fully completed. 

Similarly, the milestone to reduce motivation for illegal payments in health care did not specify concrete actions or indicators; thus, it was not possible to evaluate accurately. But based on reported actions, it was evaluated as having limited completion level. These actions included the standardisation of information provided to patients at health care institutions. 

Regarding the milestone to improve procedures for the provision of public services, the language of the commitment does not provide measurable indicators to assess completion. However, the IRM researcher identified a number of steps taken by the government towards fulfilment of this commitment. For example, the government moved eight citizen-oriented services online, created municipal anti-corruption commissions, and amended freedom of information legislation to oblige institutions to publish information about professional misconduct. Desk research by the IRM researcher identified no information regarding their perceived effectiveness.

The milestone to train legislative drafters, as worded, does not contain measurable indicators to allow the IRM researcher to determine the level of completion of this commitment. At the end of the first year of implementation, the IRM researcher could find no evidence that this milestone had started.

See the midterm report for a detailed analysis.

End of term: Substantial

The milestone to make draft legislation public was completed even before the commitment was developed, because all legislation, including official drafts, was already published at http://www.lrs.lt. In addition, the government developed the new database http://www.e-tar.lt which stores all public legislation since 1990.

The IRM researcher could find no additional output towards fulfilment of the milestone to reduce administrative burdens. Similarly, the government took no new actions in the field of illegal payments.

While there were no additional actions taken by government towards completion of the milestone to improve the provision of administrative services, web searches of various commissions show that authorities tend to comply with the requirement to post online information about internal official legal breaches.

Regarding training of legislative drafters, the milestone has been granted a substantial completion status. In 2015, the Special Investigation Service conducted 143 anti-corruption seminars with more than 5,000 officials attending.^{[Note 29: The Special Investigation Service Activity report can be found here: http://www.stt.lt/documents/ataskaitos/stt_ataskaita_2016_web.pdf.]} In addition, 1,861 participants attended ethics and anti-corruption training, conducted by the Civil Service Department.^{[Note 30: The Civil Service Department Activity report can be found here: http://vtd.lrv.lt/uploads/vtd/documents/files/VEIKLA/ATASKAITOS/Ataskaita_2015.pdf.]}

Did it open government?

Access to information: Marginal

Public accountability: Marginal

The commitment’s language is vague, and it lists a range of outputs without outlining a clear path to achieving them, making it hard to assess the potential or actual outcomes. The fully functioning legislative database was active well before the action plan implementation. The newly created legislative database with additional functionality may be considered as improving ways to access legislative information in Lithuania. In addition, a standardised information package to patients at hospitals may also have contributed to marginally improved levels of access to information. The fact that institutions largely obey the requirement to publish online  information about public officials’ administrative breaches does contribute to marginally increased levels of  public accountability. Finally, while the effectiveness of the newly created municipal anti-corruption commissions remains an object of criticism from the leading anti-corruption NGO in Lithuania,^{[Note 31: Interview with Ruta Mrazauskaite, 18 November 2016.]} the desk research indicates that these commissions tend to publish information about their activities, mainly meeting minutes, which does contribute to a marginal increase of information in Lithuania.

Carried forward?

Some issues related to this commitment are carried over in the third national action plan. These issues include:

-          Corruption in health care (action: to create and broadcast social advertisements that target corruption in the health care system);

-          Public involvement in state governance (action: to develop and implement measures for publicising information about government activities and civic participation in governance); and

-           Public input into state governance (action: to create a public consultation mechanism).