It can mean it is necessary – Newspaper Kommersant No. 10 (7455) dated 01/20/2023

As it became known to Kommersant, the White House intends to complete the project to transfer the procedures for issuing permits to businesses by the end of 2023 by the end of 2023. For this, the conceptual approach of the government apparatus to the reform will be expanded to all remaining types of permits – there are about 180 of them. By the end of the year, target descriptions of public services for issuing them should be developed, approved and agreed with the “checklists”, all necessary amendments should be made to regulatory framework and developed IT support for each service on the portal. The White House apparatus will continue to control the process – a meeting with its head Dmitry Grigorenko on a new stage of work will be held next week.

The head of the White House staff, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Grigorenko, sent out a list of instructions to the participants in the permitting reform, aimed at completing in 2023 the transfer of obtaining permits by companies to the public services portal (Kommersant has it). In total, the list includes about 500 types of permits, of which 233 (including all 49 types of licenses) have been digitized by the end of 2022, by the end of this year, procedures for issuing another 180 types of permits should “move” to the Single Portal of Public Services (EPGU), at the same time, about two dozen types of permits will be canceled or transferred to a notification procedure, and about 80 were deemed appropriate to leave “on paper” – they relate to the topics of defense, security, state secrets or customs or are not in demand by business, the official’s secretariat explained to Kommersant.

The concept of digitalization of permits, which has grown out of the reform of control and supervision – we recall that it involves a detailed consideration of the need for each permitting regime, harmonizing its goals with the procedure for granting and results, and, if necessary, restructuring and optimizing the procedure (see “Kommersant” dated December 9, 2022) – will be extended to all services displayed on the EPGU for their issuance. Next week, at a meeting with the head of the government apparatus with ministries and departments, the White House will explain with specific examples how to implement the proposed model in their government bodies.

From officials, the government apparatus will require a clear schedule (to be approved by the interdepartmental working group of the project on digitalization of the sphere under the leadership of the Minister of Economy Maxim Reshetnikov by January 20), as well as a “description of the target state of types of licensing activities” (this work will be supported by the Analytical Center (AC) under the government, subordinate to the apparatus), until March 31. Mr. Reshetnikov was also entrusted with monitoring the compliance of descriptions with the “checklists” for issuing permits, and the work should be completed by mid-April. By the same date, a list of all normative acts that require editing should be ready; ministries and services will have to coordinate with the EPGU the forms and interactive issuance of each type of permits, monthly reporting to the White House on the progress of the project.

By the end of 2023, licensing and permitting activities should be fully transferred to a new track. According to the Analytical Center, this process has already made it possible to more than double the issuance of license documents (from 16 to 7 days). At the same time, at the end of 2022, several factors hampered the process of permit reform: from the frequent lack of a qualified electronic signature by businesses, which is necessary for filling out applications for public services (the problem has been resolved, from the second quarter it will be possible to work with an enhanced unqualified electronic signature “Goskey” directly at EPGU) , until companies refuse to apply to government agencies in electronic form due to industry traditions and specifics. The AC states that in each case, the reasons for the unpopularity of a particular permit service are analyzed separately: the reasons are identified, disciplinary measures are taken against officials, internal processes are reviewed and optimized, built-in check mechanisms are debugged so that the service helps to correctly process documents, – in fact, bringing this work to a performance that suits the White House is planned to be completed before the end of the year.

Oleg Sapozhkov