A Citizen's Request for a Municipal Service That Crosses Agency Lines
A citizen applies through the unified e-government portal for a 'large family' certificate that would give her family of five children priority for a kindergarten place and a utility discount. The portal routes the application to the district education department. The education department's database shows only four children registered at the family's address, because the fifth child was registered at the grandmother's address in another district 3 years ago. The social protection department holds the income data needed to confirm eligibility but does not share it with education. The citizen's application has been pending 22 working days; the statutory decision period is 15 working days. The portal shows the status 'in processing' with no explanation. The citizen has complained to the district executive committee.
1. Who is responsible for the delay, and what principle of digital government has been breached?
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Responsibility rests with the district executive committee as the service owner, not with the citizen. The breach is of the 'one-stop shop / no wrong door' principle: the citizen submitted one application through one portal, so the state must internally coordinate education, social protection and registration data rather than sending the citizen between agencies. The education department cannot justify the delay by saying it lacks income data held by social protection; inter-agency data exchange is the state's obligation. The 15-working-day period ran out, and the portal's unexplained 'in processing' status breaches the transparency requirement that the applicant be told what is missing and when a decision will come. The committee should treat the complaint as justified and fix the process, not the citizen.
2. What concrete steps should the committee take to resolve this case and prevent recurrence?
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For this case: (1) the committee should issue an internal instruction to education and social protection to exchange the income data and the fifth child's registration record within 3 working days; (2) the citizen should receive a written interim reply explaining the delay and the new deadline; (3) the certificate should be issued if eligibility is confirmed, with the decision dated from the original application. To prevent recurrence: (1) establish a formal inter-agency data-exchange agreement with defined fields, legal basis and response times; (2) configure the portal to show which agency holds the file and what document is missing; (3) set automatic escalation to the committee's service-quality unit when the 15-day period is 3 days from expiry; (4) train staff that the receiving agency owns the whole request, not just its own segment.