Budgetary institutions pay generous amounts for works, which should be conducted by their own staff
|
|
The National Audit Office of Lithuania detected that procuring research, consulting and legal services merely ministries spent some LTL 70 million in almost three years. According to the Auditor General Rasa Budbergytė, institutions often procure such services, which have to be conducted by their own staff according to their job descriptions, therefore public funds are used insufficiently economically.
The NAOL pointed out that a faulty practice of drafting legislation has formed. The legislation is often drafted not by civil servants, but by hired lawyers and other private persons. Such practice prevails in the Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Economy and Ministry of Energy. Working groups aimed at drafting the legislation are formed on unclear grounds, since the criteria according to which representatives of business, non-governmental organizations, scientists, as well as other persons are selected, are not regulated. |
Procurement of research is not always economic and effective. The
procurement is not coordinated, therefore not all the possibilities to
use the results of the already procured research are exploited.
Institutions procuring the research name them scientific research
without any good reason and without the assessment of experts, and do
not apply the requirements of the Law on Public Procurement. This issue
was already taken note of by the NAOL four years ago, however, it
remained essentially not solved. Public institutions are not liable to
justify purposefulness of the procurement of research, as well as to
assess the effectiveness of the used funds.
In the opinion of the NAOL, public institutions often employ lawyers to
represent their interests in courts needlessly.
The NAOL recommends the Government to form general principles for the
use of the State Budget funds allocated to procurement of legal,
research and consulting services; to clearly define the concept of the
drafter of legislation, to foresee measures ensuring the publicity for
drafters of legislation, as well as to develop a database including the
data on all the planned to procure, currently implemented and carried
out research financed by the public funds.
Public audit report is available in Lithuanian:
Research, consultancy and legal services procured by public institutions