Simplex+ 2016 had an execution rate of 62%

The Portuguese minister for Administrative Modernisation said this Wednesday that the average rate of execution of the Socialist government’s Simplex+ 2016 programme to reduce bureaucracy is 62%, and cited the automatic completion of personal income tax forms as representing “a future towards which the state is moving”.

"Assessing the average rate of execution, of what is concluded and what is in the concluding phase, our rate is of 62% relative to the total of the Simplex measures.”

Maria Manuel Leitão Marques spoke to Portuguese news agency Lusa during the presentation of the progress in implementing the Simplex+ 2016 programme, and stated: “Assessing the average rate of execution, of what is concluded and what is in the concluding phase, our rate is of 62% relative to the total of the Simplex measures“. She added that the rate would be “a little bit larger if only those [measures] that were to be ready by February 2017” are counted.

Simplex+ 2016 comprises 255 measures, of which 213 are to be completed by June this year and a further 42 until March next year. So far, 54 measures have been completed.

Marques described her team as “pleased” with the rate achieved so far. “It has been a very big effort [with] a lot of work to develop it”, she said.

On the automatic calculation of personal income tax (IRS), which is being premiered this year, the minister said this was “one of the emblematic measures” in the programme, and one which “points the way to the future”, in which the state is not constantly requiring people to provide the same information.

Marques also gave the example of the project to simplify the driver’s licence, the so-called “licence on wheels”, which has three phases: “making the process virtual, eliminating the address on the document, and the electronic transmission of the data of the doctor’s certificate”. Of these, two are concluded and the third is in the test phase, for an overall rate of execution of 80%, she said.