Consultations with the Public

Consultations with the public are carried out to engage citizens into management of public affairs, to enable their free access to information on operations of executive authorities as well as to ensure publicity, openness and transparency of operations of such bodies. Consultations with the public are supposed to facilitate the system-wide dialogue of the executive authorities with the public, to increase the quality of decisions on important public and social matters with due consideration of the public opinion, and to create conditions for citizens’ participation in drafting of such decisions.

Consultations with the public are aimed at obtaining feedback from citizens.

Matters to Be Discussed with the Public

Consultations with the public are mandatory with regard to the draft legal and normative acts that:

• are associated with constitutional rights, freedoms and duties of citizens;
• are associated with life interests of citizens and without limitation influence the condition of the environment;
• provide for regulatory activities in the specific field;
• define the strategic goals, priorities and tasks in the corresponding area of public administration (including draft state and regional programmes for economic, social and cultural development, decisions on implementation thereof);
• are associated with interests of territorial communities, powers of local self-government bodies delegated to executive authorities by corresponding councils;
• prescribe the procedure for providing administrative services;
• are associated with the legal status of civil society associations, their financing and operations;
• provide for benefits or restrictions for economic operators and civil society institutions;
• are associated with assignment of names (assumed names) of natural persons, anniversary and commemoration dates, names and dates of historical events to legal persons and items they own, to property of natural persons;
• are associated with budget costs (reports by main spending units for the previous year).

Public consultations

Public consultations provide for laying down the problem of developing, formation or implementation of the state policy, resolving local matters. In their course, the entity that carries out public consultations collects and processes proposals from stakeholders on the scope of public consultations and publishes results of analysis of such proposals.

(Law of Ukraine “On Public Consultations”)

Public consultations are conducted in the form of public discussion and/or electronic consultations with the public.

Public discussion provides for organization and conducting of the following:

· conferences and forums;

· public hearings;

· round-table meetings;

· meetings;

· meetings (consultations) with the public;

· Internet conferences, video conferences etc.

Public discussion can include meetings of public councils, other auxiliary authorities established at the Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine.

Public consultations on the same issues can be conducted in different forms at the same time.

Electronic consultations with the public

Electronic consultations with the public are the mandatory form of consultations during which the executive authority posts an information notice of electronic consultations and the draft act to be discussed at its official website and/or on the online platform for public consultations.

Civic expert

Civic expert examination of activities of the executive authorities is an element of the mechanism for democratic administration of the state in which civil society institutions assess activities of the executive authorities, efficiency of their decision making and performance, preparation of proposals on how to resolve socially significant problems to be considered by the executive authorities in their work.

Civic monitoring

Civic monitoring is monitoring of how proposals and comments of the public made on the draft legal and normative acts are considered, and how transparency and publicity of operations of the Ministry are ensured. It enables timely detection of and response to the problems that arise in consultations with the public at the Ministry level.