Monitoring was conducted by the youth organization "New Generation" in framework of the project "Improving the Organisation of the Administrative Service Provision for Crimean Citizens on the Territory of Kherson Region" implemented under financial support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, European Union, and UNDP.

 

Since May 2014, receiving the administrative services has become impossible for the citizens of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. Ever since, they started applying for these services to the territorial units of the State Migration Service, the Centres of Administrative Service Provision, and other state institutions in Kherson region, which is the closest to them from the territorial point of view.

 

In process of applying for the administrative services, citizens often face a number of problems, including complexity of the procedures and lengthy period of time for service provision, long queues, and lack of proper accessible information about the venues for administrative service provision. The process of applying for services is complicated additionally by the fact that the local authorities which created the centres for administrative service provision (21 CASPs in Kherson region) faced a number of challenges in process of organizing the service provision and ensuring the centres' activities according to the requirements of the current legislation. Therefore, the Crimean citizens still need to search for certain state institutions instead of going to the centres working according to the one-stop-shop principle. The residents of Crimea are mostly not aware of with the administrative centres of Kherson region, whereas the local authorities lack the clear and transparent feedback mechanisms with the service users. Besides, the service providers agree that the number of administrators, in particular in the district CASPs, is not enough to ensure the quick service provision. In its turn, it impacts the quality of administrative services provided to the citizens of Ukraine.

 

In order to contribute to ensuring the rights of citizens of Ukraine living in Crimea for receiving the quality administrative services on the territory of Kherson region, in October 2014 the youth organization "New Generation" in partnership with the charitable foundation "Community Fund of Kherson "Zakhyst" and NGO "Social Research Institute" launched the project "Improving the Organisation of the Administrative Service Provision for Crimean Citizens on the Territory of Kherson Region".

 

Within the project, the public monitoring and assessment of situation with administrative service provision in Kherson region to the citizens of Ukraine living in Crimea. Natalya Chermoshentseva, coordinator of the monitoring group, told about the major tasks and results of the monitoring which envisaged conducting the research on the system of administrative service provision to this category of citizens; assessment of the level of their satisfaction of the service users with the administrative services; assessment of the opportunities and order of receiving the administrative services without the in-person visits to the office premises; development of the recommendations for the responsible authorities on improving the organization of the administrative service provision for the citizens of Crimea.

 

According to the results of monitoring, the services provided by the State Migration Service of Ukraine are the most popular among the citizens coming from Crimea to Kherson region. The leader of this demand is issuance of the foreign passport for the citizen of Ukraine (5229 services since May 2014); among the other popular services – introducing changes to the passport of the citizen of Ukraine on reaching 25/45 years old (1971 services provided since May 2014); issuance of the domestic passport of the citizen of Ukraine (593 services); adding data about children into the foreign passport of the citizen of Ukraine (923 services) etc.

 

The implementers of the project consider its most important task to be improvement of the organization of the administrative service provision on the territory of Kherson region. Oksana Glebushkina, the project manager said:

 

«According to the results of our monitoring, the recommendations were developed and provided to the local authorities, as well as the joint action plan on improving the system of the administrative service provision in the region. Another direction of our work is related with improvement of the quality information sharing with the citizens of Crimea on the procedures and venues for receiving the administrative services on the territory of Kherson region. The information leaflets are already printed and are being disseminated, we are also working on the social video clips, and the Google map is developed and uploaded to our web-sites with indication of the addresses and work schedules of all state institutions the providing services. In order to provide the legal aid to the citizens of Crimea, the hotline +38-050-315-68-00 was established, and the lawyer provides the online consultations through the web-site www.socioprostir.org.ua".

 

Among the major recommendations to the local authorities, suggested by the public monitors, the following were the key: define the body among the public authorities which would collect and analyse the statistic information about the citizens of Ukraine living on the territory of Crimea and applying for the services in Kherson region; the district state administrations should improve the quality of information provision on the issues related with administrative services in the CASPs by adding the up-to-date information to the stands in the office premises and on the official web-sites; the inventory of all information cards about the administrative services should be prepared to update them and improve in line with the current legislation; Kherson regional state administration should improve the policy of informing on administrative services by making it more open and accessible, strengthening the cooperation with the civil society organization, in particular, in the area of informing the population on the activities and services of the Centres; and the information about the work schedules and working hotlines of the service providing institutions should be made available to the public.

 

At the same time, one should realize that development of the favourable environment for the reform in the system of the administrative services should be a joint key task of the state authorities at all levels, therefore, the central authorities should ensure the decentralization policy, in particular, by delegating the authorities on provision of basic services to the local self-government bodies (residence registration, issuance of the passport documents, state registration of the legal persons and physical persons – entrepreneurs, marriage, car, land lots registration, issuance of the driving license, etc.) and by orienting the centres' activities at the needs of the users of administrative services.

 

The participants of the event agreed to meet again in February for the expert level discussion in the roundtable format, and develop the multi-stakeholder action plan on raising the quality of administrative service provision to the citizens of the region and AR Crimea.