The recent Resolution of the Council of Ministers establishes that all public services must ensure walk-in service without the need for prior appointments and provide real-time information about capacity and waiting times. This measure was published this Tuesday in the Diário da República.

As announced at the end of June, the Government defined that “all services and entities of Public Administration that provide in-person service to the public,” whether or not integrated into a Citizen’s Shop, must ensure service hours “without the need for prior appointments, on a daily basis.” The submission of simplified documents will also no longer require prior scheduling.

Public services must provide appropriate, complete, and updated information in Portuguese and English, both on their websites and at physical locations. Additionally, it will be mandatory to indicate “in real time” the waiting time for service. The Telephone Translation Service will be promoted through the Migrant Support Line of the Agency for Integration, Migration, and Asylum (AIMA).

Priority service tickets will be made available for citizens with disabilities or incapacity, the elderly, pregnant women, and people with young children. State services must address any “physical accessibility constraints.”

Each entity must conduct a study to be delivered “within 180 days,” including an assessment of the number and adequacy of human resources for public service functions, as well as possible improvements to physical facilities; the identification of services provided exclusively in-person, justifying the need or possibility for digitalization; and an evaluation of the impacts of teleworking on meeting in-person service demands.

The Government of Luís Montenegro recommends that the bodies of the autonomous regions of Madeira and the Azores, as well as local authorities and entities of regional and local administration, adopt these norms for uniform application throughout the country.

The Agency for Administrative Modernization, under the supervision of the Minister of Youth and Modernization, Margarida Balseiro Lopes, will be responsible for establishing partnerships to expand the network of Citizen Shops and Citizen Spaces, an initiative that began under the previous Government and uses funds from the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR).

Source: eco.sapo.pt