Institutions will be required to respond to received requests substantively within seven working days, according to the amendments to the Law on Requests. They have already been approved in the final reading by the Saeima's Commission on State Administration and Local Governments, the parliament's press service reports. The changes are intended to reduce bureaucracy in communication between residents of Latvia and institutions and expedite the receipt of responses. Currently, a month is allocated for preparing responses.
In turn, if the institution needs to obtain additional information, contact other institutions, or analyze and process a large volume of information to prepare a response, the response time may be up to 15 working days, as stated in the annotation to the amendments.
The amendments also provide that the institution may forward a request that is outside its competence to another institution within five working days. If, in the opinion of the institution, it is more appropriate not to forward the request, it may inform the applicant which other institution to contact. Meanwhile, the applicant must be notified of the forwarding of the request to another institution within seven working days from the date of receipt of the request.
Responses to requests are part of the creation and implementation of state policy, and this is one of the main duties of civil servants. The proposed amendments aim to reduce bureaucracy in the processing of requests, simplify and expedite the process, and are expected to improve citizens' interaction with government institutions, the authors of the amendments noted in the annotation to the bill.
It is planned that the changes will come into effect next year and will apply to requests received by institutions after January 1.
For the amendments to take effect, they must still be approved by the Saeima in the final reading.
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