On-line publication of companies’ acts (OLP)

Best practices in Public Administration 5th edition award winner in 2006, in the improvement of processes category - On-line publication of companies’acts is a procedure that allows companies to do the mandatory publications in an official website, instead of the paper National Gazette. This measure of administrative modernization turns the publication process simpler, faster e cheaper, and benefits to all the companies and other people. The use of computers and the Internet as a way to publicize the companies’ acts turns companies’ life more transparent, making the information accessible to the ones who relate with them.

Policy Context

The traditional way of promoting the mandatory publications in the official paper gazette began to turn obsolete, demanding several manual procedures to assure the publication. Also, as the official gazette was not sold as any other paper, but only in a few authorized places, there was no real publicity to companies acts. It became very difficult to reorganize the processes, because the official gazette wasn’t fast enough. That was obvious with the “on the spot firm” project, in 2005, which demanded an immediate publication of the registry act of creation of the company. In order to lighten administrative burden and obtain efficiency gains, with objective of giving real publicity to companies acts, Portuguese Government included this measure in the «SIMPLEX» program (Public program for reducing administrative burden in public administration). Nowadays, all mandatory publications are electronically done, no longer needing several people to prepare and then publishing it. The OLP are being carried out by the “Instituto dos Registos e do Notariado, I.P.” (The Public Institute of Registry and Notary), with technological support of “Instituto das Tecnologias e Informação da Justiça, I.P.” (The Public Institute of Technology and Information of Justice).

Description of target users and groups

The target group of this project are companies that, by law (the national Commercial Registry Code and Companies Law, and Directive 68/151/EEC), have to do mandatory publications of its acts, in order to give them publicity. It also benefits all citizens, companies and entities that need to access the public information about companies.

Description of the way to implement the initiative

The management of the process was assured by Instituto dos Registos e do Notariado, IP and the technical structures was built by the Instituto das Tecnoligias de Informação na Justiça, IP. This two public entities belong to the Ministry of Justice. Multi-channel issues: The OLP procedure is done on-line, implying data transference between the public commercial register and the website. To perform it or to see the publication it only needs a computer, connected to the internet.

Main results, benefits and impacts

The traditional way of publication, in the official gazette involved the following acts, that took several days or even weeks. - After registering the company act by the commercial register, someone had to prepare a new paper text, with the same content, and fill a form. Both paper and form had to be sent by post to the official gazette. - Some days later, received in the official gazette, the paper text and to be introduced manually in the publication. - Then the gazette had to be printed and delivered to the selling points. With the OLP, by doing the commercial registry, the publication is automatically assured by the application, and with just one «click» the commercial register sends it electronically to the site and in that same minute it is published on-line. A work that took days or weeks and several workers in the past is now done in a minute by just one person. At the same time, the information is now much more accessible to general public, as it can be accessed in the net with no charge, and is cheaper to companies (before it was around 80 € for paper sheet occupied by the act and now it is 30 € for act published). Until April 2007, were published 351 023 on-line acts and there is evidence that Companies save 15M€ to 17M€/year. For all this, OLP wan a best practices in Public Administration award, in 2006, in the 5th edition of this award that was promoted by the National Administration Institute (INA), and Delloitte. Innovation: The novelty of this process is related to the fact that it is done entirely by electronic means, saving resources of public administration to do other more important tasks and of the companies, that save 15M€ to 17M€/year. Transference of data between the public commercial register and the site is automatic and electronic, as the publishing order is given, it is immediately available in the site, with no need of any paper. This means a improvement in the mandatory publication process, reducing administrative burdens, and better final results, as the publicity gave by the site is more efficient and real.

Return on investment

Return on investment: Not applicable / Not available

Track record of sharing

By winning best practices in Public Administration award, in 2006, this project was, at the national level, considered to be a best practice to be followed in other sectors of public administration.

Lessons learnt

First processes must be analysed in order to simplify procedures and then one must eliminate every step that does not has utility to the process major propose. On the other hand, new technologies can mean a radical change in administrative procedures, reducing time and number of workers needed to perform the tasks that really have to be done. Also, simplifying the procedure can mean more efficiency in accomplishing its proposes. In this case, not only there was a serious reduction of red tape, by eliminating paper from this process, but also there were much better results in the efficiency of the publicity made, turning companies’ acts more visible to the ones how want or need to deal with them and reducing conflicts. Scope: National