In order to keep you informed and updated on legal issues and of national interest, we inform you that through Decree 5-2021 the Congress of the Republic approved the Law of Simplification of Requirements and Administrative Procedures, which aims to implement, modify and at the same time modernize the procedures and management of the formalities that are carried out before the state agencies, specifically the Executive Branch, excluding its application to the Judiciary, and Municipalities; In addition to being able to move towards the conversion of an electronic government, reducing bureaucracy and the wear and tear that this currently implies, increasing competitiveness.
Among the most outstanding aspects of the law, we can consider the following:
1. In the management of administrative procedures, the agencies may only demand compliance with the requirements expressly established by Law or Governmental Agreement, therefore any other “criteria” or non-regulated requirement may not be demanded by the management at the door.
2. Users must only comply with the requirements and/or procedures that are in force at the time the administrative procedure was initiated and may not be affected by subsequent reforms or modifications to the procedure.
3. Once an application for an administrative procedure has been submitted to an agency or an inter-institutional Portal, the procedure for verification of formal and substantive requirements must be carried out, avoiding partial reviews, which implies that once the file has been reviewed it may not be rejected or suspended again due to any subsequent observation; if one or more missing items are identified, the user will be requested, either physically or electronically, to correct and resubmit the file. No agency may charge charges, costs, or fees for the rejection of files. This means that the fees currently charged to users in some Registries and public agencies for the rejection or suspension of files must be modified, which discourages the unfounded rejection of files and shortens the time it takes to obtain results in public services and administrative procedures.
4. Public entities are prohibited from demanding documents and information provided by the agency, related to any information, document, certificate, and/or evidence that they generate or issue. And in case the law requires the presentation of documents generated or issued by the agency for a procedure, the same agency shall incorporate them ex officio.
5. The agencies are obliged to publish on the Internet the administrative procedures that can be processed in the agency and the requirements that must be fulfilled and/or submitted for such processing.
6. The agencies in charge of administrative procedures must implement the necessary technologies so that such procedures may be handled remotely, seeking to automate them.
Likewise, the Law contemplates specific deadlines to implement the changes and platforms according to the provisions of the decree, being the following:
1. For the deadline for the publication of forms the authorities will have a period of six months from the entry into force of the law, to place their forms and/or applications online, through their web pages or web pages developed for the purpose. Likewise, within the same term, all agencies must adjust their administrative procedures, plans, and internal policies to the provisions of the law, and must create a plan to simplify administrative procedures and services.
2. The agencies will have a term of one year to implement electronic means to make available to their users the information required by the present law and a term of two years to implement systems that allow the completion of procedures by electronic means. This Decree will enter into force three months after its publication in the Official Gazette, which is still pending approval.