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STATE CHANCELLERY, POLICY PLANNING GUIDELINES (unofficial translation, excerpt)

(…)

3. Principles of Policy Planning

The following main principles are lied down as the basis for these Guidelines: (…)

- The principle of participation – non-governmental organisations, private sector, local governments, international institutions are involved in the process of policy planning. Society is provided with information regarding policies planned. (…)

- The principle of accountability – policy planning is results oriented process. Accountability is ensures at all levels of public administration. (…)

7. Policy assessment and accountability

To improve the system of policy evaluation and accountability the Guidelines foresee:

- to strengthen ex-ante assessment of new policy initiatives;

- to develop policy ex-post evaluation;

- to improve the system of annual reports of public sector institutions.

The solutions proposed in this chapter of the Guidelines are supporting implementation of the following principles in policy planning - the principle of participation and the principle of accountability.

7.1. Problem statement

Assessment of new policy initiatives is a process, where likely impact of particular policy instruments foreseen for achieving the new policy objectives is assessed. The conclusions from the analysis of expected policy impact are the basis for deciding on use and improvement of a particular policy instrument.

Impact assessment of new policy initiatives is used to achieve the following objectives:

- improve the quality of information required for decision-making;

- improve the effectiveness of Government’s work;

- improve legal environment by avoiding regulatory measures that create "unnecessary" burden on different social groups.

Assessment of new policy initiatives was started in October 1998, by approving changes to Saeima’s (Parliament’s) Internal Procedure Act that required that all submitted draft laws are accompanied by annotation, and provided with questions that need to be answered by body submitting a draft law.

The existing Regulation of the Cabinet of Ministers on Internal Order and Procedure of the Cabinet of Ministers does not include provision for preparation of annotations for both draft Cabinet of Ministers regulations and policy planning documents. As a result of that, there are cases when documents are approved without assessment of expected impact of policy, although its influence on a particular sector of economy or social issue is substantial. This creates initially unforeseen problems during policy implementation process.

Current annotations are dominated by subjective approach and evaluation, as after approval of overall norms requiring impact assessment there is no unified methodology and criteria of prognosis developed in specific areas that would help the Ministries to carry out qualitative assessment of new policy initiatives.

Although in the Ministries, there are various cooperation and consultative councils within which the Ministry position is coordinated with interests of social partners, often the documents are submitted to the Cabinet of Ministers without proper reflection of the opinion of non-governmental organisations. (…)

7.2. Improving the system of policy assessment and accountability

The system for impact assessment of new policy initiatives and for evaluation of policy implementation can be improved by working in the following directions: (…)

- Increasing the role of non-governmental organisations in the process of discussing new policy initiatives.

At present, there is no requirement for reaching agreement with social partners¹² before submitting policy planning documents to the Cabinet of Ministers, although a public discussion during policy conceptual preparation stage is more important than during preparation of specific legal acts. (…)

7.3. Further activities

In order to improve assessment quality of new policy initiatives, as well as to strengthen accountability for policy results, it is necessary to undertake the following measures: (…)

2. When preparing the new Cabinet of Ministers Regulations on the Internal Order and Procedure of the Cabinet of Ministers: (…)

- to include the norm that requires to add the information regarding consultations with non-governmental organisations to the policy planning documents submitted to Government;

¹² Social partners can be any organised structure of civil society that is interested in a particular policy issue.