Breakthrough in bureaucracy: the civil servant takes charge of coordination

What if a person no longer needed to run between different state administrations, submit documents repeatedly, and figure out for themselves who to ask for the next authorization or coordination?

The EU could make a simple but fundamental change to reduce bureaucracy: when the State requires the coordination of several administrations for a given procedure, it is the State itself that communicates with them.

The person submits their application to a single official . This official becomes the coordinator of the entire process and personally obtains all the necessary coordination, advice and conditions from other public services.

The person does not need to know which administration coordinates what. They do not need to be a lawyer, urban planner, or bureaucracy expert.

One request, one official, one responsibility

Currently, in many areas, the situation is reversed. Citizens or entrepreneurs are told they need even more coordination. They then have to find the right service themselves, submit a new application, wait for a response, and then contact the next administration.

If five coordinations are required, the person may, in practice, end up acting as a courier between administrations .

That's not reasonable.

The state itself knows what requirements it imposes on the individual. It also knows which administrations must be involved in the decision.

The responsibility should therefore shift from the individual to the official.

The new principle could be:

The individual submits a single application to the state. The state takes care of the rest.

If the official finds that the decision requires, for example, environmental, emergency, heritage protection, transport or local authority coordination, he is the one who sends the requests.

The civil servant becomes a case manager

This does not mean that a single official should decide matters that fall within the jurisdiction of other administrations.

On the contrary.

His task would be to coordinate a specific case .

It gathers the necessary opinions, monitors deadlines, communicates with other administrations and finally gives the applicant a single and complete answer .

If an administration believes that the application has a deficiency, the person should not simply receive a message such as:

"You still need this or that coordination."

The official should rather say:

"We need more information. Please send us these three documents."

That's a considerable difference.

In the first case, it is up to the person to understand the system.

In the second case, it is up to the system to understand the person.

The real problem with bureaucracy is not always the number of laws

When we talk about bureaucracy, we often focus on the number of laws, regulations, and requirements.

But an equally important question is:

Whose responsibility is it to coordinate compliance with these requirements?

If the state has created a system where a single decision requires information from ten different administrations, it is not reasonable to entrust the citizen with the task of assembling this system.

The citizen should not be the project manager for the state's information systems.

He should not need to know which administration is responsible for such a specific issue.

He shouldn't have to call ten different places to find out who to ask for the next coordination.

"The state demands, the state organizes."

The simplest principle of this reform could be:

When the State requests coordination, it is also the State that organizes its attainment.

When a civil servant needs the opinion of another administration, it is he who sends the request.

If a document is already available in a state registry, the citizen should not have to submit it again.

If an administration does not respond within the deadlines, the problem is resolved between administrations — the person is not sent back for another round.

This would fundamentally change the relationship between the state and the citizen.

We must also give responsibility to the civil servant

Such a system implies an important change: the official must be given responsibility for the conduct of the entire procedure.

Currently, responsibility can be spread across several departments and officials. If something isn't done, everyone can say they did their part.

In the new system, the person would have only one point of contact .

If the procedure drags on, it must be clear who to contact.

If the administrations give contradictory opinions, it is up to the coordinator to clarify them between them.

The citizen does not have to solve a problem of internal state organization.

The next step of the digital state

Estonia already has a robust digital state and extensive registries. The next step may not simply be the creation of more online services, but rather the transformation of the state's internal organization to make it invisible to the citizen.

The ideal digital state is not one where the citizen fills out ten different electronic forms.

The ideal digital state is one where the citizen fills out a single form and the state organizes the rest.

When the application is submitted, the system could automatically identify what coordination is needed, forward it to the relevant departments and group the responses under a single procedure.

The person would simply see, in their digital space:

Application submitted → being coordinated → decision being prepared → decision ready.

All the inter-administrative work would take place in the background.

Less bureaucracy, more entrepreneurship and initiative

Such a change would not only be a matter of comfort for citizens.

It could have a direct effect on entrepreneurship.

Every day an entrepreneur spends communicating with different government agencies is a day they cannot spend developing their business.

The same applies to a person who wishes to build a house, start a business, change the use of a property, develop production or launch any other project.

The simpler it is to deal with the state, the lower the bureaucratic cost to the entire economy.

The reform could begin as a pilot project

To implement this idea, it is not necessary to reorganize the entire state in one day.

We could start with an area where coordination is extensive and procedures are complex.

For example, we could create a system:

"One request — one official — all the coordination."

The results of the pilot project could be measured very concretely:

• how many times does the person need to communicate with the authorities;

• how many documents does she have to submit herself;

• How long does the procedure take?

• How many administrations are involved in the procedure?

• by how much does the working time of civil servants and citizens decrease;

• By how much does the number of errors in the procedure decrease?

If the results are positive, this model could be extended to the entire public sector.

The state should not be an obstacle course.

Bureaucracy should not mean that a person has to prove their ability to fight against the state.

The mission of the State is not to make citizens navigate between different government departments.

The mission of the state is to organize its own work in such a way that the person can settle their affairs as simply as possible.

If the State requires five coordinations, then it is the State itself that requests these five coordinations.

It's a small change of mindset, but a very big change for the person.

The simplest measure for reducing bureaucracy could be summed up in a single question:

How much work must the person do before the state can make its own decision?

The fewer there are, the better.

A breakthrough in bureaucracy does not necessarily mean fewer laws.

It means that the person no longer has to run the state in place of the state.