Questions/Answers

SIMPLEX is the Portuguese programme for simplification and modernization of public services. It follows a citizen-driven approach, with the ultimate goal of having citizens and businesses' everyday life and their interaction with the public administration as seamless as possible. SIMPLEX considers the needs of citizens and businesses as the key criterion to identify priority areas for action and the most appropriate simplification measures. Citizens, entrepreneurs and public servants are consulted during the design of the initiatives and its subsequent implementation. The SIMPLEX programme arose from the need to respond to the growing demand from citizens - nowadays more informed, more concerned with the quality of public services and, therefore, more engaged in its transformation. There’s also the need to address the frenetic pace of change of today's increasingly interdependent economies, by offering an enticing environment for business and creating conditions to increase international competitiveness. The birth of the Simplex programme was also the result of the Government’s awareness of the inadequacy of the public offer and the consequent generalized distrust to the institutions and their way of doing public management, historically connected with bureaucracy, inefficiency and lack of transparency. The programme was launched in 2006 and between 2006 and 2011, more than 1000 measures were successfully implemented across all Portuguese public administration. After a brief interregnum from 2011-2016, SIMPLEX was re-launched in 2016, retaining its original feature of a nationwide cross-cutting programme but adjusted to address new challenges in a new digital era, making use of the digital channels. SIMPLEX combines in a single governmental programme the objectives of smarter and better regulation; reduction of the administrative burden; enhancement of public trust; service interoperability and efficiency; digitalization of forms and procedures; easy access to public services; cutting red tape; and the promotion of Digital Government.

SIMPLEX is a collaborative, nationwide simplification programme devised to co-create new digital public services, optimize existing ones and de-bureaucratize the relationship between public institutions and civil society – making public services and processes simpler, faster and more transparent. As such, it involves citizens, businesses and public administration in the co-creation of more efficient, transparent and accountable services, fostering silo-breaking and promoting a culture of collaboration within the public sector. SIMPLEX has strong political support and is implemented and monitored through a ministerial Focal Point Network, allowing a sustainable dematerialization of processes, service interoperability and innovative approaches to public service delivery.

The initiative supports Goal 16 in two specific targets: 16.6 and 16.7. SIMPLEX stands out as a citizen-driven and co-created programme, based on a bottom-up process that allows the definition of “real-life” services that truly respond to the stakeholders’ needs and tackle the issues identified by the different end-users, reinforcing their trust in the institutions. The programme’s website is an instrument for transparency and accountability, publicizing SIMPLEX activities and projects, their implementation stage and timelines, as well as the entities in charge for each of the initiatives. Furthermore, the website presents the possibility to participate – by proposing new measures or asking questions – with the purpose to have continuous participation and openness. The implementation of SIMPLEX measures throughout the years has proven that public services have become increasingly more effective and transparent – as a very concrete example, one of SIMPLEX’s 2020/21 measures is “my data”, which will allow citizens to access all the information that the public administration has about them, follow the circulation of that information and, when necessary, authorise its use by different entities, keeping a record of the use of their data.

SIMPLEX focuses on achieving a more effective, efficient and simpler public service delivery. The results have shown economic and social sustainability by allowing significant savings, in both money and time, for all parties involved. The increasing use of green IT solutions to improve processes and services also leads to environmental sustainability. Also, it foresees a broad set of measures in these areas such as the open dissemination of social security statistics, providing companies with a single point of contact for online notification of activity with biological risk agents or improving the Tourism knowledge platform with BI and geodata tools.

At the beginning of the 21st century, administrative and legislative simplification and modernization had become a priority and unavoidable task for many governments in Europe and beyond. In Portugal, these topics were considered decisive to achieve the objectives outlined by the Government (2005) in its Programme. Thus, Simplex was born, under the political direction of the Prime Minister and as a responsibility and task shared by the entire Government. For the first programme all ministries were involved, and by the end of 2011, over 1000 measures had been identified and put into action, effectively changing and improving public service delivery in Portugal. Despite this, we understood that the positive impact of SIMPLEX could be maximized by hearing not only the public administration but all stakeholders who would benefit from the Public Administration simplification and modernization. Hence, SIMPLEX was relaunched in 2016 as a new, highly inclusive and innovative programme, nurturing the involvement of citizens, entrepreneurs, academia and public servants in the process of determining and designing the initiatives to be implemented by the public administration. SIMPLEX has proved fundamental in consolidating a whole-of-government approach to the delivery of better, more efficient public services, resulting in important savings (see Q9).

Portugal has gender equality policies in practice for a long while now and they’ve already blend into the Portuguese culture. As such, gender inequality wasn’t specifically addressed. Nevertheless, it’s worth saying that anyone can participate in the SIMPLEX process regardless of gender and put forward initiatives that concern gender inequality if they so choose to – even anonymously – and they will be addressed. Also, it might be worth to say that the “faces” of SIMPLEX, besides the Prime-minister, were the Minister and the Secretary of State of Administrative Modernization, two women.

Simplex is very inclusive and addresses all parties involved in public services, either as users or suppliers: citizens, businesses and the public administration. There were no specific target groups, such as the elder or the poor, but rather everyone is given voice to let the government know what can be improved to create a more effective, efficient and user-friendly ecosystem. Although the initiative’s outcomes weren’t always measured but rather perceived, an independent study conducted in 2018 on 40 measures (from an overall amount close to 2000) clearly shows the enormous impact of the programme: the impact of the measures under review was above EUR 170 million annually, encompassing annual savings of 15 Million hours. It also can generate a potential additional impact on the economic activity of more than EUR 89 million of Gross Value Added (GVA). And these numbers reflect a deeper impact: the improvement in the quality of daily lives, with less money spent, more hours saved and more seamless and friendly interactions with the public administration.

SIMPLEX is based on three main stages: diagnosis; analysis and design; and implementation and evaluation (publicly available calendar). Normally, the first and second phases take up to 6 months and then the measures that emerge are presented to the public, starting the implementation phase. The Diagnosis phase encompasses a public consultation involving citizens, businesses and public administration in the co-creation of simplification measures. This includes public events with the civil society and meetings with business confederations, associations, academia and local authorities, besides an open channel for submitting proposals through the SIMPLEX website and a Facebook page with the programme, its agenda, and a questionnaire for suggestions. In 2016, these initiatives also included a “Startup SIMPLEX” competition to reward innovative ideas for products to be adopted by the public administration. The participation of the public administration is further pursued through the SIMPLEX JAM, a series of Design-Thinking meetings that specifically enrol public servants from all origins. In the Analysis and Design phase, the inputs received are processed by the Administrative Modernisation Agency in collaboration with the public entities involved, resulting in a set of new measures for each SIMPLEX annual edition. The implementation timeline and budget are the responsibility of the public administration in charge of a given measure, in coordination with AMA. Finally, the Implementation phase includes monitoring measures through an electronic platform transverse to all areas of governance and accessible by the SIMPLEX Focal Point Network. This network is composed of one representative from each ministry, that identifies tasks for the implementation of measures and constantly promotes and updates its execution rate. Progress reviews are made every two weeks, with a strong focus on removing implementation barriers. The timeline for implementing measures is between 1 to 2 years, depending on the complexity of the measures.

The most significant potential obstacle was first and foremost the cooperation between different government areas, as historically public administrations worked in silos. However, this was tackled form the very beginning, with a strong political endorsement from the Prime-Minister. The second challenge was lack of belief – the public administration thought it an impossible task, while citizens and businesses had little confidence that the government would follow up on their proposals. Three main features ultimately led to SIMPLEX being one of the most iconic programmes in the country: perseverance, transparency (in the process and its outcomes) and accountability.

SIMPLEX promotes an innovative public consultation to co-create with citizens, businesses and public administration a national de-bureaucratization programme. It includes nationwide open events with civil society, meetings with business confederations, academia and local authorities, open online channels for submitting suggestions, design thinking sessions for public servants and a Focal Point Network with representatives from each ministry. As such, SIMPLEX encompasses a truly bottom-up process that allows the definition of “real-life” services responding to the different needs of end-users. Also innovative is the fact that SIMPLEX covers all governmental areas, making them work together and coordinate efforts to provide better services.

N.R.

While the first generation of SIMPLEX (2006-2011) was already oriented to the dematerialization of procedures, it was the relaunching as SIMPLEX+ (2016) that brought a clear focus on the digital transformation of public services, including a multichannel approach and more recent techniques like design thinking. SIMPLEX comprehends an ever-evolving set of tools, mixing different approaches and solutions to achieve a more participative, innovative and co-created initiative. 2019’s edition, for example, was branded iSIMPLEX and presented a renewed focus on innovation and technology, organized around domains like interacting only once, sharing and reusing, digital by default, behavioural economics and emerging technologies

While we are not aware of specific adaptions to other contexts, since its first edition in 2006, several delegations from different countries visited Portugal to know the SIMPLEX Programme and study its design and implementation. The methodology focused on co-creation and the engagement of several stakeholders can be used on programmes with both a national and cross-sector focus (such as the SIMPLEX) but also in smaller programmes, or it can be adapted to focus on a specific governmental area or geographic region.

In the SIMPLEX programme, the collaboration and co-production work with citizens, entrepreneurs, business confederations and associations and the public administration itself resulted in very relevant measures such as facilitating the fulfilment of tax and social security obligations, eliminating the need to fill forms or provide unnecessary information and facilitating the issuance and lifecycle of personal documents and certificates. These challenges in de-bureaucratization, simplification and modernization of the public administration are shared by governments worldwide and SIMPLEX+ can therefore provide a useful tool to address them. SIMPLEX can be easily adapted to most countries’ contexts, as it is based on a simple methodology and lifecycle – diagnosis/public consultation, analysis and design, and implementation and evaluation – and presents a solid governance model and simple and effective tools to interact with citizens. It is worth mentioning that paper forms are also made available to the initiative stakeholders, in order to prevent the digital divide. Additionally, the effectiveness of the SIMPLEX methodology has been recognized by the European Institute of Public Administration, which awarded SIMPLEX the European Public Service Award 2019 in the European and national category.

The Administrative Modernization Agency (AMA) has 3 people at the technical coordination and monitoring of the project, although specific tasks may be outsourced. The SIMPLEX+ website and the web platform that categorizes the measures were developed through outsourcing, with the close involvement and management of the SIMPLEX+ core team. SIMPLEX adopts a financial distributed model through the different governmental areas. We can extrapolate overall fixed costs amounting to 2 FTE per governmental area, plus the financing for the implementation of the respective sectoral measures. Finally, there is also an investment in communication supports, promotional videos, merchandising and other related materials.

The existence of strong political support and a ministerial Focal Point Network is key to assure the sustainability of an initiative that already managed to instil a collaborative culture inside the public administration, further contributing to the sustainability of SIMPLEX. The political support is also essential to guarantee both the financial and the human resources needed, and to push coordination between different entities. The implementation timeline and budget of each measure is the responsibility of the public entity that owns it, which assures the financial viability of SIMPLEX.

Yes

The initiative was evaluated by Ernst & Young, in a study commissioned by the European Commission, under the Structural Reform Support Service. The study evaluated the impact of 40 measures of the Simplex+ Programme (2016 & 2017) on its beneficiaries (citizens and companies) and on the Public Administration itself, identifying lessons of experience that allow adjustments to be made in the measures already implemented and to be implemented. The methodology used to support this evaluation was the Standard Cost Model (SCM), which is usually used by the European Commission and its Member States to identify and quantify administrative burdens.

The approach goes beyond the SCM paradigm, incorporating methodological extensions to evaluate the SIMPLEX’s impact not only on businesses but also on citizens and the public administration. Moreover, it emphasizes a qualitative analysis in order to reflect the perception of users about the SIMPLEX measures. The adapted SCM and the annualization and extrapolation of the costs translate into three indicators: Measures’ implementation costs (Public Administration); Net savings: “Gross savings” induced by each measure, in euros and hours, to both the beneficiaries and Public Administration, minus the respective implementation costs; Potential GVA associated with the release of resources (companies).

The total impact of the measures under review is above EUR 170 million annually, encompassing annual savings of 15 Million hours. It also can generate a potential additional impact on economic activity of more than EUR 89 million of Gross Value Added (GVA). Having been divided into 7 typologies, the twelve measures included in “Obligations made easier” stand out from the rest, representing a total net savings of almost EUR 80 million and over 9 million hours, per year. The typologies “More services and more information in a single spot” and “Documents more accessible” contribute with an aggregate savings of approximately EUR 70 million. The remaining categories account for 12% of total monetary savings of all the measures. The business sector appropriates the greatest share of the monetary savings (49%), while the citizens are the greatest beneficiary of the Simplex+ measures in terms of time saved (54%). Recommendations for further impact, which have since been taken into account, including deepening the simplification of the information obligations, extending the simplification of the processes in an integrated way, further using technologies and policies of data sharing, and consolidation of evaluation and monitoring.

The governance model of the SIMPLEX programme establishes the Minister of State Modernization and Public Administration as the main responsible for the initiative, with direct support from the Prime Minister. The Secretary of State for Innovation and Administrative Modernisation is in charge of coordinating and monitoring the programme with the technical support of the Administrative Modernization Agency (AMA). Moreover, SIMPLEX encompasses a Focal Point Network constituted by representatives of the various Ministries and which assures a constant articulation between the abovementioned top coordination and the different public organisms involved in the implementation and monitoring of the SIMPLEX+ measures. In addition to the SIMPLEX core team, the initiative envisages the cooperation of a broader set of resources during the periodic organization of nationwide open events that aim to collect the views and contributions of citizens and businesses.

The vast majority of SIMPLEX initiatives were brought by citizens, entrepreneurs and civil servants through initiatives like: • SIMPLEX Tour, crossing the country and organizing open events to collect ideas; • SIMPLEX JAM, participatory meetings and design thinking sessions to gather public servants’ ideas for new services and improving old ones; • SIMPLEX+ website, an open and permanent channel where anyone can submit complaints, ideas or suggestions; • Startup Simplex, organized in 2016 for entrepreneurs to prototype new solutions for the public administration. In each edition, the main challenge is reaching as many stakeholders and collecting and processing as many contributions as possible, to accurately identify the most effective cost/benefit measures to implement. Paper forms are also made available to prevent the digital divide. To make these sessions more appealing, the Secretary of State for Innovation and Administrative Modernisation is often present, with the Minister of State Modernization and Public Administration and the Prime Minister himself taking part in some events. The proposals evaluation and the programme development itself are also collaborative efforts that involve all areas of governance. The Focal Point Network, plus the political support from the Prime Minister, help to push forward measures that need strong cross-sectoral coordination and interoperability.

The definition of proper governance and accountability mechanisms, involving all stakeholders from the beginning, and fostering a sourcing and bottom-up approach, is key for the success of nationwide and cross-sector programs like SIMPLEX. The existence of strong political support and a ministerial Focal Point Network is key to ensure the sustainability of the initiative, reinforcing the commitment of every entity. Such political support is also essential to guarantee both financial and human resources and push the coordination between different areas. Furthermore, changes of government or strategy can sometimes impact negatively the implementation of measures, but this has been overcome by maintaining administrative simplification and modernization as a key area of government. Also, the existence of AMA as a transversal body that gives common technological and architectural support (e.g. eID and interoperability), as well as guidelines to facilitate the implementation of simplification measures, is crucial. In what regards to plans to improve SIMPLEX, this edition brought the possibility for public entities to propose modifications to measures that are being implemented, in order to adapt them to unexpected factors – such as COVID or an economic crisis, for instance. Such proposals must be justified and go through a formal process of validation.