The commission approved, among other issues a bill on amendments to several legal acts aimed at improving the supervision and control of state-provided services in education and optimising said services.
The measure is primarily aimed at optimising the teaching licencing procedure, such as introducing a perpetual license and cutting the list of documents required to apply for a licence. The bill also includes streamlining of the state accreditation procedures for educational institutions, in particular the possibility of getting an accreditation for a larger group of specializations, extending the accreditation term for professional education institutions to six years, and other educational institutions to 12 years. The period for considering applications will be reduced with regard to licensing and accreditation. The bill also transfers the authority to confirm graduation certificates, degrees and titles to regional governments.
The commission has generally approved a bill on licensing specific activities aimed at harmonising and simplifying various licensing procedures, and a further reduction of the list of activities that require licensing. This bill has been drafted as part of the action plan for improvement of state administration in 2009-2010. It is aimed at regulating the relations between federal executive bodies, regional governments, legal entities and self-employed entrepreneurs engaged in activities that required state licensing. The key principles of licensing include: support of the integrity of the economic space in Russia; establishing a single list of activities that require state licensing; establishing and applying a uniform licensing procedure; approving a comprehensive list of licensing requirements and conditions with regard to the activity being licensed; and open access and availability of licensing information while offering the licensing procedures free of charge.
The bill takes into account the results of the Economic Ministry's monitoring of government regulation's impact on business trends in 2006 through 2008, and is geared to mitigate the observed problems.
One problem is the lack of clear-cut definitions of the activities to be licensed. Without such definitions, it is possible to interpret a given activity in an extreme way, which makes it impossible to draw up a comprehensive list of licensing requirements and conditions.
To remove this legal discrepancy, the names of definitions of activities to be licensed should be changed to describe a broader range of similar activities. Further, each government-approved provision on licensing a specific activity should stipulate a comprehensive, detailed list of works or services that are part of the broader activity. In this case, the licensee will have to comply only with the requirements of a specific job or service.
A single standardized order should be established for the licensing of the activities to be listed by the bill.
The bill also stipulates the annual monitoring of the state licensing authorities' efficiency, based on efficiency standards and methodologies, to identify problems promptly.
The bill is aimed at streamlining the licensing system in Russia and avoiding excessive numbers of acts regulating licensing procedures.
The commission also considered a draft government resolution amending several government regulatory acts in order to authorise the Economic Development Ministry to draft state policies and regulations for state supervision and to control licensing in the sphere of industrial safety, and drafting conclusions assessing the regulating impact with regard to specific drafted acts.
The draft resolution stipulates additions to the Government Regulations and rules for drafting regulatory acts of federal executive bodies and state registration of such acts. One of the additions will be a new conclusion from the Economic Development Ministry - a conclusion assessing the regulating impact of draft acts regulating relations in the sphere of state supervision and control, as well as the sphere of establishing, applying and fulfilling compulsory requirements to specific products and processes related to such products including design, manufacture, construction, installation, storage and so on.
In accordance with the draft resolution, the Economic Development Ministry will be authorised to develop assessment methodologies on the impact of the new regulations and the procedure for drafting conclusions assessing the impact of the regulations.
In addition, the draft resolution suggests authorising the ministry to coordinate the federal executive bodies' activity such as supervision and control, licensing, self-regulation in professional activity and entrepreneurship, monitoring the federal executive bodies' abidance by laws on state supervision and control, licensing, self-regulation of professional and entrepreneurial activity, and by industrial safety legislation.
The commission also considered and eventually approved a draft federal law amending the Russian Administrative Offences Code (the section that determines responsibility for violating technical regulations).
The commission considered the progress of an action to improve the supervision and control and licensing functions and to optimise state services provided by the federal executive bodies in agriculture.
The commission considered two more plans needed to implement the decisions made on optimising the procedure for delivering state services, including a) state registration of births and deaths and b) registration of Russian citizen's place of permanent or temporary residence, as well as the issue, replacement and registration of Russian passports.
In particular, changes are to be made to the legislation to make it possible to arrange a funeral producing a medical death certificate (without state registration), and to require that medical personnel issuing a death certificate inform civil registration offices. Changes will also be made to the government resolution to make it possible for an individual to obtain a Russian passport within an established period after a single application to a Federal Migration Service office.
The commission also considered a range of other issues.