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Introduction of a Transparent Public Policy Development System
State Chancellery of the Republic of Latvia
Latvia

The Problem

In 2000 analysis of the situation shows that there is lack of coordination at the center of government. Draft decisions are coming to the Government meetings not consulted with social partners and NGO’s. Consultation is insufficient even between sectoral ministries. Draft documents are not available publicly, there is no procedures defining the conditions of participation in elaboration of public policies and new regulation for NGO’s. Consultations are carried out by line ministries in decentralized way and depending on good will of the ministries. There were cases when socially „hot” issues are submitted to decision makers without any public discussion and consultation.
State of affairs really affects all the social groups – civic society in general, because there is no procedure and no information available on preparation of Government decisions. NGO’s and social partners are involved in preparation of policies on ad hoc basis. Only in some sectors procedures of public debate and consultation are defined (for example – environment protection). In some cases NGO’s of the relevant sector are participating in consultative bodies of ministries, but there is lack of systematic approach to involvement of society in decision making.
Even in the cases when NGO’s are involved in elaboration of new legislation quality of analysis for new initiatives is law. Generally administration is focused on law drafting, there is no capacity and knowledge on policy analysis and impact assessment. The draft laws even in cases if they are available for civic society are difficult to understand because of lack of conceptual discussion before the law drafting stage.

Solution and Key Benefits

 What is the initiative about? (the solution)
The reform was developed to improve the quality of decision making at the level of government. Involvement of civic society was considered as one of the main directions of activity for the reform. New rules of procedure for the government were prepared defining the main tools for development of public policies (policy documents) and regulatory impact assessments of draft normative acts. Rules of procedure define the procedure of consultation between line ministries and rights of NGO’to participate in interministerial consultation procedure, submit their opinions, that should be reflected in the information on consultation annexed to draft policy papers and draft normative acts going to approval to the Government session. New institution – weekly meeting of State secretaries (higher civil servants in Latvian administration) was introduced and rights for the association of NGO’s defined to participate in this meeting. The announcement procedure for drafts are introduced. All the drafts prepared by line ministries are announced in this meeting and from that moment time for consultation starts.
Reform was supported by Web based IT system ensuring availability of all the announced drafts in the Web page of the Government. NGOs and every citizen could check the new policy and legislative proposals and submit the opinion to initiating ministry. The webpage provide similar information also for drafts submitted for consideration in Government Committee and Government session.
From year 2003 Government meetings are defined as open for public. NGO’s have a right to participate in Government meeting and express their opinion on the issue if agreement is not reached in interministerial consultation cycle. Information on expressed opinions is included into annotations of normative acts (Regulatory impact assessment) what improves the quality of discussions and substantiation of solutions proposed for decision makers.
The new procedure of Memorandum with civic society is developed starting from 2005. Preparation of the draft memorandum was initiated by the non-governmental sector. The document has been developed with the aim of facilitating operation of an efficient public administration system that meets the interests of the society by ensuring involvement of the civil society in the decision-making process. The Memorandum was signed on June 15, 2005 by the Prime Minister, and representatives of 57 NGOs.
The document is open for signing for new NGO’s. Based on Memorandum NGO’s are participating in monitoring meetings of Government program (Government Declaration).
Evaluation surveys show that participation in policy development and decision making is significantly improved in the period of implementation of reform. In average there are 7 -8 cases per year when NGO’ are participating in the Government sessions to present their opinion on new initiatives. This number shows that main disagreements are solved in preliminary stages of consultation, and government decisions are better prepared and consulted. Effectiveness of the Government work is regularly measured by the State Chancellery and in time period since 2001 when new procedures come into force the time of Government meetings are decreased from average 6,5 hours to 2,3 hours.

Actors and Stakeholders

 Who proposed the solution, who implemented it and who were the stakeholders?
Reform was developed and coordinated by the State Chancellery of Latvia, particularly new established Policy Coordination Department with support of Legal department, Communication Department and Information Technology division. Especially the role of the director of the State Chancellery of Latvia Mrs.Gunta Veismane should be stressed, because the high level support to reform was one of the key success fuctors for implementation of changes. All the line ministries were involved in the development of the new Rules of procedure of the Government and System of Annotations (RIA). Centre of Nongovernmental Organizations that evolved in Civic Alliance of Latvija were the closest counterparts in coordination with nongovernmental sector, supporting the development of the coordination system for NGO’s. Latvian School of Public Administration supported reform with providing necessary training courses on new procedures, annotatoions, policy analysis and impact assessment.

(a) Strategies

 Describe how and when the initiative was implemented by answering these questions
 a.      What were the strategies used to implement the initiative? In no more than 500 words, provide a summary of the main objectives and strategies of the initiative, how they were established and by whom.
The Framework strategy document of the reform was Policy Planning Guidelines (the Guideline - http://www.mk.gov.lv/) developed by the State Chancellery of Latvia and accepted by the Government 9th October 2001.
The aim of the Guidelines was to adjust the process of policy planning in Latvia by improving policy planning, strengthening link between policy planning and budget process, and by building more effective systems for policy evaluation and accountability.
In order to improve policy planning proposes:
 to set a clearer hierarchy and establish linkages between policy documents;
 to specify types of policy planning documents, their structure and place within policy planning process;
 to orient policy and budget planning towards policy objectives and results.
To achieve these objectives, the Guidelines foresee:

1. To establish four types of policy planning documents: guidelines, programme, plan, and conception. Each of these types has a specific structure, place within the process of policy planning and relation to other three types.
2. To improve coordination and hierarchy of policy planning by strengthening link between Government’s priority setting and planning of work within public administration.
3. Gradually, to introduce performance oriented management within institutions of public administration. The detail of this system will be worked out later in specific policy and normative documents. In the future, policy guidelines and programmes will require performance measures - results and indicators of their achievement.
4. To establish a system where new policy initiatives can be submitted for conceptual approval to the Cabinet of Ministers through the whole year. However, in cases where additional financing is required, the final approval of policy initiative can be done only within the process of budgetary planning.
5. To create a system of strategic planning and to set Institution Action Strategies as the main planning instrument for institutions, including planning of both financing and policy programmes, as well as providing a mechanism for accountability for results.
6. To determine that policy programmes will have to correspond to budget programmes after introduction of Institution Action Strategies in the whole of public administration.
7. To strengthen ex-ante policy assessment and to promote policy ex-post evaluation, by strengthening annotation system for draft regulations of the Cabinet of Ministers, by preparing methodology for policy impact assessment and evaluation of policy implementation, and by providing necessary training.
Participation, communication and consultation were defined as the basic principles of the approach to public policy and these principles are applied to all the stages of development, implementation and monitoring of policy.

(b) Implementation

 b.      What were the key development and implementation steps and the chronology? No more than 500 words
Following the objectives of Policy Planning Guidelines, the key main developments in the implementation of the reform were:
1. Acceptance of the Rules of Procedure of the Cabinet of Ministers 14th March 2002, establishing the system of policy planning documents, impact assessment template and procedures for consultation with involvement of NGO’s.
2. Acceptance of Annotation of a Draft Legal Act and Instruction on Annotation 1 st January 2002, establishing unified Impact assessment template for all draft legal acts, including the mandatory reflection of the consultation process with NGO’s and social partner organizations.
3. Acceptance of the Methodology on the Operational Strategies of institutions (Strategic plans) in January 2003 and piloting of the template of the Strategic plan in certain ministries. The Operational Strategies of the institutions is the main document establishing the linkage between policy programs and budget and implementing the program budgeting approach.
4. Guidelines on the System of Results and Performance Indicators, accepted on 13 th March 2003.
5. Development of the operational strategies of the all line ministries, years 2004 -2006.
6. Concept paper “On the Implementation of Strategic Planning and Medium-Term Budgeting in Public Administration”, September 2006.
7. Overall process of implementation was supported by different regular and taolor maid training events, both for public servants and NGO’s. Implementation of the reform was supported y regular seminars, conferences and publications on the issues related to particular directions of the reform.
8. Monitoring reports on implementation of the Guidelines were prepared every year, ex post evaluation report was prepared at the end of 2006.
9. The further development of the system is designed in approved Government Guidelines “On the improvement of the policy making system in Latvia”, 18th September 2006.

(c) Overcoming Obstacles

 c.      What were the main obstacles encountered? How were they overcome? No more than 500 words
The policy reform in Latvia was developed and implemented without focused support at the political level. By this reason the main challenge for the reform was to create the awareness and support to the reform at the professional level of the key civil servants at the line ministries. One of the key success factors for the reform is defined and strong support to the reform from the Ministry of Finance. In the implementation of the reform the most challenging and hard issue at the first stage was achievement of common understanding and approach on the issues of linkage of policy system and strategic planning with budget procedures. The change in the approach of Ministry of Finance came rather late – the Concept on Medium term budgeting was accepted only in the September 2006, after all the Ministries already had elaborated Operational Strategies. The reason for that were fundamental traditions in preparation and execution of annual budget, mainly focused on planning and control of inputs rather than outputs and outcomes of the policies. Our experience shows that close cooperation on daily basis with the Ministry of Finance and reaching of agreement with key officials from it is one of the main success factors that finally allows to move with overall reform.
Competence and practical skills of public servants frequently are insufficient. Training and focused seminars are only the partial solution of problem because of rather high turnover in many institutions. Training and network of policy analysts should be established and working on everyday basis.
Nevertheless there was the general understanding and agreement on necessity of openness of public policy process for consultations with society, involvement of NGO’s from the early stages of the policy development, there always are factors working against this general trend – consultations take time and quite frequently there is political request for policies to be developed in fast way, or even going directly to development of new regulations without necessary consultation and analysis. Political level of administration bounded to the regular cycle of elections and government changes are rather focused on short term results than medium term perspective and quality of policy decisions. Training and discussion events were organized particularly for the ministers, but not all the Governments are open for professional training and development. The reform should be managed also at tactical level. Sometimes there was a possibility to get political support for some particular aspects of reform, like introducing the open meetings of government at 2003 or NGO’s memorandum procedure in 2006. These cases should be supported at professional level and this approach allows to move faster at least in some directions of reform.
Improved consultation process with nongovernmental sector is requesting resources of NGO’s. In Latvia nongovernmental sector is still in development stage and there is deficiency of capacity and resources for involvement in policy elaboration at professional level. Only starting form 2007 some of the organizations are getting financial support from government program. Several training courses and special publications were prepared by the State Chancellery on consultation process for NGO’s, but that should be considered only as a partial and not most effective solutions.

(d) Use of Resources

 d.      What resources were used for the initiative and what were its key benefits? In no more than 500 words, specify what were the financial, technical and human resources’ costs associated with this initiative. Describe how resources were mobilized
The resources for creation of the main change agent for the reform – Policy Coordination department of the State chancellery were retained in the result of internal optimization of support functions of the State Chancellery. In the result of optimization 13 positions were reduced and 5 positions created for the new department with coordination functions in policy reform. In the process of further reorganization the public administration reform was defined as function of the State Chancellery and today the staf of Policy Coordination Department is 14 public servants responsible for policy coordination and public administration policy.

Reform was continuosly supported by the international assistance projects. The most important of them were:
Period Title of the Project and donor Funding (LVL)
2000.- 2003. UNDP Project „Development of the system of policy impact assessment” 30280,26
2003. PHARE 2000 project „Public expenditure management”, LE0011.11 253848
2005. PHARE 2002 project „Improvement of the institutions of public sector” LV02/IB/SPP/01TL 100427
2006. – 2007 PHARE „Support to application of EU instruments in policy development in the frame of Better Regulation initiative” Nr.2005/017-495-05-01/0005 113350,51

The biggest amount of resources were necessary for the development of the information technology systems ensuring the e-government, electronical document system for the Webpage of the Government – Meetings of State Secretaries, Cabinet Committees and Government meetings:
2002 – 2004.
IT document systems, Web page, e-portfolio of the meetings – 104.319 LVL
2004
Data basis of the Policy planning documents - 8840 LVL
New version - 85 000 LVL
2005
Data basis of the institutions of the Central administration - 8024 LVL
2006
Data basis of the Research and publications 991 LVL
New version of the Webpage of the Government 16315.90 LVL
2005 – 2007
Unified system of electronical circulation of documents at central administration – 363 332 LVL
The total resources used for the development of the IT systems for Government in time period of 5 years is 2,2 million LVL. It should be mentioned that some systems like e-portfolio and new electronical system for the circulation of documents in central administration only partially should be counted as input for policy reform.

Sustainability and Transferability

  Is the initiative sustainable and transferable?
All the systems developed in the frame of policy reform are in place and in many cases there are “second generation” initiatives for improvements and further developments. Particularly new policy documents are developed for the next medium term – Guidelines on the development of policy planning system and new Methodology on the system of performance indicators. Policy development and consultation culture is considered as normal functioning of public institutions, nevertheless there are cases when the established procedures are ignored. State Chancellery is monitoring the functioning of the systems on regularly basis and in some cases there have been interventions from the State Chancellery and Prime Minister to fight tendencies to avoid established procedures.
All the innovations of the reform are fastened by regulatory enactments and methodological tools. All the changes are related to further development of the system. Procedures of interministerial consultation and involvement of society more and more become internal culture of administration. They are practised for already more than 5 years, unified, well understand in public institutions, what makes overall work of administration more opened and effective.
Developed and clearly regulated consultation procedure between ministries and with nongovernmental sector leads to better understanding of the systems, allows to see best practises of all the institutions and should be considered as a specific input in the administrative capacity building of the institutions.
The next medium term reform has to be extended to the regional and local level of administration and to establish coordination links with special planning instruments. To reach this target the new Draft Law on the planning of development is elaborated.

The policy reform is one of the main directions of activity for the international cooperation of the State Chancellery. There are several assistance projects led by the State Chancellery where the main approaches of the reform was successfully implemented in other Eastern European countries:
2006 - Phare Twinning project RO2003/IB/OT/ 10, 2003/005-551.03.03 “Strengthening the Romanian Government’s capacity for policy management and coordination and for decision-making” where the State Chancellery was a Twining partner for the General Secretariat of the Government covering development of the Rules of the procedure of the Government, consultation procedures, development of the public policy and impact assessment system.
2007 - Sigma funded follow-up project “Further development of the strategic planning system in Romanian public administration”. Project is devoted to ensure sustainability of public policy reform, supported by tha Twinning project
2007 - project BA06-IB-OT-02-TL “Twinning Assistance to the Office for Legislation of the BiH Council of Ministers” covering the improvement of the quality of legislative drafting, impact assessment and in some aspects improvements of the procedures of Government.
Experts form th State Chancellery work also in different projects in Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, Russia. State Chancellery regularly entertains the study visits form other countries. One of the tools used for exchange of information and further development of good, opened and evidence based policy making are annual international Summer institutes organized by the State chancellery and devoted to professional aspects of policy making and communication.

Lessons Learned

 What are the impact of your initiative and the lessons learned?
The first and most important success factor of reform was good team developing reform and led by the manager who understands and supports the necessary changes. Establishment of the Policy Coordination Department at the centre of Government was the facilitating factor for general changes in centre of Government, building “new chancellery” and step by step expanding the new approaches to all the central administration.

The experience form other countries were widely used but never copied. All the approaches and interventions were developed and established in process of consultation and cooperation within public administration and with nongovernmental sector.

Political determination to create good government is the key success factor. In cases when there is lack of political support tools should be found how to create awareness and support of political level. Flexibility is important – it is possible to choose the priorities of the reform that fits with political agenda and move faster with those. If there is lack of general support sometimes it is possible to find some ministers supporting changes – they could involve others and they can convince others.

Ownership, leadership and drive on part of senior Civil Servants are very important. It is people not institutions who own, lead and drive reforms

Contact Information

Institution Name:   State Chancellery of the Republic of Latvia
Institution Type:   Government Agency  
Contact Person:   Gunta Veismane
Title:   Director of the State Chancellery  
Telephone/ Fax:  
Institution's / Project's Website:  
E-mail:   gunta.veismane@mk.gov.lv  
Address:   Brivibas Boulevard 36
Postal Code:   LV-1520
City:   Riga
State/Province:  
Country:   Latvia

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