A report of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on regulatory reform under way in Lithuania devotes a great deal of attention to the construction sphere. 'Recently we have considerably simplified the issuance of construction documents by moving these services online, improved the information systems and reduced the time for the issuance of documents. Statistics show that such innovations are convenient for people – last year almost 70% of all applications for building permits were submitted electronically,' said Minister of Environment, Kestutis Treciokas, speaking of the advantages of the document issuance reform.
According to the simplicity of terms for the issuance of documents permitting construction, this year Lithuania has been rated among three countries (out of 13) that are most favourable to business in the region. During two years, our country has climbed by three positions and now takes the honourable third place after Denmark and Germany. Globally our country is in the 15th place (out of 189 countries). In 2014, Lithuania ranked the 24th.
Lithuania has achieved this important victory by defining the time limits for the issuance of documents permitting construction and the personal responsibility of persons involved in this process for their action or omission, reducing the number of institutions participating in the process, modernising the information system Infostatyba and moving the procedures online. All these factors reflect international good practice and they have received a positive assessment from the stakeholders. The OECD report gives a particularly positive evaluation to the transfer of the 'one-stop-shop' service to the cyberspace for the issuance of documents permitting construction.
The OECD member states universally acknowledge the advantage of digital construction services: the availability and quality of such services is improving, and a possibility to follow the deadlines relating to the issuance of documents, to correct errors without delay and to assess the transparency and accountability of the procedure is provided.
In 2014, Lithuanian municipalities and the State Territorial Planning and Construction Inspectorate under the Ministry of Environment received a total of more than 75 000 applications regarding the construction process. About 62.5% of them were submitted via the information system Infostatyba. Of the 45 400 registered applications for building permits, almost 70% were submitted via the information system Infostatyba.
