High resolution permissions – Newspaper Kommersant No. 229 (7430) dated 12/09/2022

Intermediate results of the digitalization of licensing and permitting activities show that the receipt of all planned types of licenses (49 types) and 182 types of permits (100% of the plan for the year) has already been transferred to electronic form, but there remains a significant variation in the penetration of their receipt through the public services portal as between departments , and inside – depending on the type of document. As Kommersant found out, the White House apparatus and its subordinate analytical center under the government are busy clarifying and eliminating the causes of what is happening – businesses have already been promised a partial removal of problems with the requirements for an enhanced qualified electronic signature for certifying documents, which has become the main reason for refusing electronic applications for licenses.

The transfer of online procedures for issuing, renewing and clarifying licenses and permits has become for the government an offshoot of the reform of control and supervision – as its curator, head of the government apparatus and Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Grigorenko previously explained to Kommersant, the digitalization of licensing activities logically continued the process of minimizing contact between business representatives and officials, allowing companies to cut costs at the same time. The reform of licensing activities was initiated by government decree No. 1279 of July 30, 2021, and the circle of its participants was constantly expanding – by April 2022, it was decided that the issuance of permits through the public services portal would eventually become a permanent regime (see “Kommersant” dated April 22 ). As it became known to Kommersant, the data processed by the Analytical Center under the government record progress in this work – for example, the issuance of all 49 types of licenses and 182 types of permits has been transferred to public services (100% of the plan, the list will expand by the end of the year). As of December 7, the share of electronic applications to licensing authorities reached 33.2% of more than 100,000 applications (37% of 53,000 at the federal level and 29% of 47,000 at the regional level), doubling from 4% to 2% – the share of delays in their processing has decreased.

At the same time, the results of this work revealed large discrepancies in the shares of digital applications for permits, both among implementing agencies and by individual activities. The progress of a number of state bodies and areas attracts increased attention to those who are lagging behind – but the government apparatus does not promise quick administrative measures. Instead, the AC is tasked with finding and minimizing the causes of problems. The analytical report of the AC on the interim results of this work (the center, we recall, is engaged in expert support of the White House reforms and for this it was transferred to the government apparatus) records that for certain types of activities, such as geodesy and cartography (Rosreestr, 1.1 thousand . applications) or licensing bus transportation of passengers (Rostransnadzor, 4.5 thousand), the share of electronic applications reaches 90%. In a number of activities – for example, when using subsoil – out of 4.9 thousand applications in electronic form, not a single one was submitted.

The assumption that this is due only to the level of digitalization of the departments themselves, the lack of IT capacities or personnel, is not confirmed by the AC data: the shares of electronic requests fluctuate significantly when requesting different types of documents from one department. The same scatter is recorded by the AC between the shares of electronic applications for the initial obtaining of licenses (49%) and their change (42%) – and in the statistics of refusals: on average, their share at the federal level is 24.3%, in digital form it is higher – 27.9%. Moreover, different requirements for the volume of documents and their design also further confuse the overall picture.

Based on the results of the weekly online monitoring of the licensing sector, the AC concluded that the main reason for refusing to submit documents through public services is the inability of companies to sign an application with an enhanced qualified electronic signature (ECES) due to the inconvenience of obtaining and applying it. As Dmitry Grigorenko’s secretariat explained to Kommersant, in order to solve the problem, from the second quarter of 2023, entrepreneurs will have the opportunity to instruct their representative to sign an application directly on the portal with a strengthened unqualified electronic signature “Goskey”.

A separate area was the unification of approaches to working with digital licenses between departments: for example, the center found out that the main reason for the return of electronic appeals and documents to the Ministry of Culture was the submission of copies of work books, employment contracts, education documents that were not certified by the UKEP each separately – although other licensing authorities accept such applications for work. “Based on the results of such clarifications, we are consistently making decisions to remove barriers, over the past month the share of digital applications for permits has grown by 10%, the average period for issuing a license through the EPGU has decreased to seven days against 16 on average,” the White House staff says.

Oleg Sapozhkov