First unified centre of providing public services opened in central Moldova village

Chisinau, 21 December /MOLDPRES/ - The first unified centre for providing public services (CUPS) was opened in the Lozova village, central Straseni district, today.  

According to the government’s communication and protocol department, the new centre is an innovating model of providing public services and will be represented by a specialist employee of the mayoralty, who will facilitate citizens’ access to a wide range of public services, provided by two institutions which participate in the pilot project: Public Services Agency (ASP) and the National Social Insurances House (CNAS).  Subsequently, the range of services will be extended through the development of partnerships with other institutions providers. Among the services citizens can request through CUPS, there are:    

- release of extracts from civil registry documents or property documents;   

- submitting applications online;  

- verifying the status of the application on the pension’s re-examination; 

- applications for allowances; 

- scheduling for a certain service or taking documents;  

- payment of bills for public services.  

Attending the inauguration ceremony, Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilita said that the today’s event was the first one of the kind in Moldova. ‘’As of today, people from Lozova and the neighbour villages will be able to access digital governmental services with the support of a trained specialist. This means that we leave nobody behind the digitalization – even people without phone or computer may come to the mayoralty to benefit from the advantages of the public services’ digitalization. One of the goals of the government I lead is for the public services to have a low cost and be easier to be accessed,’’ the PM said.       

For his part, Deputy Prime Minister for Digitalization Iurie Turcanu stressed that the project had been implemented in cooperation with more authorities, among which the Lozova mayoralty, ASP, CNAS. ‘’We had the same values, the same visions of the way of providing the public services, with new instruments, new possibilities. Thus, we reduce the burden on citizens, queues at desks, number of documents collected,’’ Turcanu noted.   

The new centres will work at the headquarters of mayoralties and diplomatic missions and consular offices and will be endowed to be able to provided public services, electronic ones, as a priority. The people with no access to internet or who have no enough digital competences to use public electronic portals by themselves, will be able to ask for assistance at CUPS to benefit from governmental services in their settlement.   

At the first stage, 2021-2023, 26 centres will be inaugurated in Moldova and abroad, among which 17 at mayoralties from rural settlements and nine ones at Moldova’s embassies and consular offices abroad. The criteria of selecting the pilot settlements were, inter alia, the geographic distribution, number of residents, availability of rooms and human resources, as well as their motivation to participate in this process. Subsequently, depending on the experience gained and requests, decision-makers will be able to extend and ensure the CUPS’ implementation nationally in about 60 settlements.       

The action takes place in the context of implementation of the digitalization agenda and in accordance with the strategies provided for in the government’s activity programme and action plan and is meant to back the efforts of governance’s modernization and improving the quality of public services provided to Moldova’s citizens.        

CUPS is set up within the project, Modernization of governmental services, implemented by the Electronic Governance Agency, with the support of the World Bank Group and Moldovan government’s contribution.   

Photo: Government