Standardize Public Consultation Practices (RO0048)

Standardization of practices on public consultation processes
Lead implementing agency/actor The Secretariat General of the Government (SGG) - Directorate for Open Government and Civil Society
Other actors involved State actors Ministries CSOs, private sector, multilaterals Non-governmental organizations experienced in the field
What is the public problem that the commitment will address?
Analyses of the current situation highlight a number of issues in the public authorities' work practices to ensure a participatory / representative decisionmaking process in the implementation of the framework law on public consultation (Law no.52/2003), namely issues related to: lack of standardization of practices, insufficient capitalization and non-standardized public communication on the recommendations received from the civil society
Commitment description
What is the commitment? With a view to fostering a culture of transparency and public consultation in the public administration and improving the public perception on the legitimacy of the decision-making process, the SGG will propose the improvement of the legal framework in the field by developing implementing rules leading to more efficient mechanisms of decisional transparency, as provided by Law no. 52/2003.
How will the commitment contribute to solve the public problem?
- standardizing the interpretation and application of the law in the practice of public consultation processes; - expanding the capacity to harness the recommendations received during the consultation process, the cornerstone of the collaboration between public administration and the community; - increasing the general level of information for
citizens; - improving public services delivery.
Why is this commitment relevant to OGP values?
Standardization of opening the processes of substantiating the decisions taken by the Romanian public administration to the interested parties will contribute to the improvement of the quality of the normative acts and to the optimization of their implementation processes, as well as to the accountability of the public authorities, while increasing the public decision’s degree of integrity
Milestone activity with a verifiable deliverable
Monitoring the public consultation processes of all ministries - as a relevant target group for public authorities (as main issuers of draft normative acts with a general impact at national level): filling questionnaires for statistical data at the level of all ministries + 1 meeting
SGG/Ministries 2018 2018
Identifying the most serious malfunctions in the public consultation process: online questionnaire addressed to civil society on each ministry's website for 30 days + 1 meeting with the non-governmental sector.
SGG/Ministries/NGOs January 2019 March 2019
Establishing additional functionalities of the e-consultation platform through interaction between public authorities and the non-governmental sector: 1 meeting with representatives of ministries and 1 with non-governmental organizations
SGG/Ministries/NGOs January 2019 June 2019
Elaboration of the implementing rules for increasing the efficiency of the decisionmaking mechanisms provided by the Law no. 52/2003.
SGG/Ministries/NGOs 2020
Correlation with other government programs/strategies National Anticorruption Strategy 2016-2020, Strategy for Strengthening Public Administration

1. Standardization of practices on public consultation processes

Commitment Text: "With a view to fostering a culture of transparency and public consultation in the public administration and improving the public perception on the legitimacy of the decision-making process, the SGG will propose the improvement of the legal framework in the field by developing implementing rules leading to more efficient mechanisms of decisional transparency, as provided by Law no. 52/2003."

Milestones:

• Monitoring the public consultation processes of all ministries - as a relevant target group for public authorities (as main issuers of draft normative acts with a general impact at national level): filling questionnaires for statistical data at the level of all ministries + 1 meeting
• Identifying the most serious malfunctions in the public consultation process: online questionnaire addressed to civil society on each ministry’s website for 30 days + 1 meeting with the non-governmental sector.
• Establishing additional functionalities of the e-consultation platform through interaction between public authorities and the non-governmental sector: 1 meeting with representatives of ministries and 1 with non-governmental organizations
• Elaboration of the implementing rules for increasing the efficiency of the decision-making mechanisms provided by the Law no. 52/2003.

Start Date: 2018 ...............................................

End Date: 2020

Editorial Note: The commitment text is abridged. The full text can be found in the OGP 2018-2020 national action plan.

Context and Objectives

This commitment is a continuation of Commitments 5 and 6 of Romania’s third action plan (2016-2018). [1] While the transparency of the decision-making process in public administration is ensured by law 52/2003, [2] academic research, [3] monitoring reports, [4] and interviews with civil society representatives, [5] all reveal that this law is insufficiently and not-uniformly applied. According to the representative of the Secretariat General of the Government (SGG), while the public administration implements much of the feedback it receives, they do not communicate how and why that feedback was used or not. [6] This lack of communication can create the impression that the public is not heard and inhibit civic participation.

Therefore, this commitment aims to (1) standardize the interpretation and the application of law 52/2003, (2) enhance the ability of public administrations to validate feedback, (3) increase citizen awareness on transparent decision-making laws and practices, and (4) improve the delivery of public services. The first objective responds to the recommendation of the earlier IRM Progress Report for the 2016-2018 action plan and addresses the problem of inefficient application of the transparent decision-making law. [7] The second and third objectives address the communication problems between the public administration and feedback-giving citizens.

This commitment is specific enough to be verifiable. The SGG representative provided the IRM researcher with a list of meetings and dates that correspond to the detailed milestones in the commitment text. [8] The representative also argued for the training of public servants to better communicate how they consider the feedback they receive could increase the level of information and satisfaction of the general public and further encourage civic participation. [9] According to the SGG representative, the SGG aims to expand the e-consultare.gov.ro platform to (1) allow the institution that initiates the normative act to directly manage the public consultation process on the platform, (2) make feedback and answers visible to all, (3) automatically synchronize the websites of the institutions that initiate normative acts with the platform, and (4) generate qualitative and quantitative statistics on feedback received and answered to. The commitment is therefore relevant to civic participation.

If implemented as written, the commitment could transform the public consultation process. While a new round of crowdsourcing feedback is unlikely to produce new insights for SGG, ensuring that feedback and communication over feedback dismissal or valorization is made visible to takes place within the platform, in a transparent manner, could significantly lower the barriers to, and increase the quality of civic participation. This aspect of public accountability is viewed by the SGG representative views that this accountability component is a major gain for ensuring meaningful consultations and collaborations between civil society and public administration. [10] The issuance of application norms could also reduce the possibility that public authorities do not apply the law uniformly. As suggested by the SGG representative, training of public officials, a central repository of public consultation practices where they can instantly compare their performance to their peers (the e-consultare.gov.ro platform), and norms of application are more effective tools than sanctioning noncompliance, at this stage. [11]

Next steps

This commitment is important considering the low levels of communication between civil society and public administration. The following recommendations can help guide the implementation of this commitment:

Ensure the platform’s traction and its institutional memory.

• SGG could create a permanent institutional memory of proposed improvements to the e-consultare.gov.ro platform with reasons for why they are not being implemented or the timeline according to which they will be implemented, in an open repository. To this end, SGG could consult with the Ministry of Transport to find synergies with their Register of Proposals.
• SGG could make sure the e-consultare.gov.ro platform will be used by both public administration and civil society. To this end, SGG may refer to the e-consultare.gov.ro platform in the implementation norms of law 52/2003.

Ensure sufficient budget for the platform’s development.

• The government could allocate enough budget for the timely implementation of the additional functionalities of the e-consultare.gov.ro According to the SGG representative, its IT department will analyze the proposals and create an action plan for those that fit the time and budget that SGG can allocate. [12]

Consult on the draft implementation norms.

• Although not explicitly included in the action plan text, according to its representative, SGG will propose the draft for the implementation norms for law 52/2003. The norms will incorporate the feedback received from civil society and from public authorities and will be subject to public consultation. [13] This is a good approach that could be implemented.

[1] The government experimented with a pilot website consultare.gov.ro, where legislative projects of public institutions were collected and made available to the public in a centralized and uniform manner. Despite its popularity, due to a lack of technical and physical resources, this pilot was stopped in April 2018, allowing the Government to redesign and rebuild it. See "IRM Romania End-of-Term Report 2016-2018", OPG, pp. 23-28, https://bit.ly/36loycR.

[2] The text of law 52/2003 on decisional transparency in public administration is available [in Romanian] at https://goo.gl/m3Qwqe.

[3] Academia de Advocacy (2015) M-am decissămăimplic", available [in Romanian] at https://goo.gl/HmvsWc.

[4] Interview with Madalina Mitroi, General Secretariat of the Government (SGG), 17 April 2019.

[5] Interview with Marian Damoc, Romanian Youth Movement for Democracy, 8 November 2018.

[6] Interview with Madalina Mitroi, SGG, 17 April 2019.

[7] "IRM Romania Progress Report 2016-2017", OGP, pg. 55, available at https://goo.gl/AHqzEe.

[8] Interview with Madalina Mitroi, SGG, 30 August 2019.

[9] Interview with Madalina Mitroi, SGG, 17 April 2019.

[10] Interview with Madalina Mitroi, SGG, 17 April 2019.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Interview with Madalina Mitroi, SGG, 30 August 2019.

[13] Interview with Madalina Mitroi, SGG, 17 April 2019.

1. Standardize practices on public consultation processes

Substantial

According to a SGG representative, SGG wrote a report on how the ministries applied law 52/2003. SGG used the 2017 annual reports published by the ministries as well as input given by the representatives of the ministries during a working group meeting that SGG organized in April 2019. The monitoring of the application of law 52/2003 has revealed significant differences between the central and the local public administration as well as within these groups dating to 2017. The 2017 benchmark may be used to measure the effects of this commitment only after conducting a monitoring of the situation in 2020.

SGG also carried out a survey to identify the most important bottlenecks in the application of law 52/2003 and published the findings on the OGP repository. Finally, SGG gathered suggestions for improving the e-consultare.gov.ro platform from both civil society and the public administration and published them on the OGP repository. However, the proposed functionalities have not yet been implemented due to lack of budget or IT plan. In November 2019, SGG published the draft implementation rules for law 52/2003 on its website. The draft implementation norms reflect several of the suggestions that SGG collected from this commitment, but the government did not approve them by the end of the action plan period. Thus, the commitment is considered substantially, rather than fully, completed.