Organisational Requirements
GovStack Building Block requirement specifications MUST support unitary and federal organisational structures in the public sector.
Source: https://govstack.gitbook.io/paera-doc Chapter 2
If “A unitary state is a state governed as a single entity. There are no federal autonomous regions” is true, than the following definition is valid:
“Government units are unique kinds of legal entities established by political processes that have legislative, judicial, or executive authority over other institutional units within a given area. The principal economic functions of government units are to:
Assume responsibility for the provision of goods and services to the community or individual households primarily on a nonmarket basis.
Redistribute income and wealth by means of transfers.
Engage primarily in nonmarket production.
Finance their activities primarily out of taxation or other compulsory transfers.
A government unit may also finance a portion of its activities in a specific period by borrowing or by acquiring funds from sources other than compulsory transfers—for example, interest revenue, incidental sales of goods and services, or the rent of subsoil assets. All government units are part of the general government sector.”
From our perspective, the most crucial aspect of this definition is the funding from the public budget and the non-market nature of primary activities. Following is an example of how a unitary state defines its public sector (based on Digital Transformation and Public Services, Edited by Anthony Larsson and Robin Teigland, 2020 by Routledge).
In a federal system, the Central Government represents the Federal Government, and an additional budgeting level will be added for federated states/counties. Local municipalities fall under specific states/counties, such as in the USA, Nigeria, India, etc. In this case, the diagram could be presented in the following way:
In some countries, there are no state-provided social insurance schemes, which means there are no social insurance funds. However, in terms of digitalization, these differences are not important. At the end of the day, these are budget levels with pre-defined sets of responsibilities and revenue sources.
In smaller countries, there will be fewer independent budgetary levels and units. In larger countries, there may be more budget levels, some shared revenue allocations from one budgetary level to another, and more budget units. Otherwise, there are not many differences between bigger and smaller countries when it comes to the required building blocks for digital transformation.
Government sector – includes public sector entities that are not considered market producers and are financed mainly by compulsory payments made by entities belonging to other sectors. In a typical small or medium-sized country, the government sector is divided into three sub-sectors: central government, local governments and social insurance funds.
Other public sector – public sector companies that produce goods and services with the participation of the state and other government sector members (e.g. utility companies, strategic resource processing, etc.) and Central Bank.
Central government – state institutions belonging to the sub-sector of the central government (government institution, state institution managed by a government institution, county court, administrative court and district court); constitutional institutions (the Chancellery of the Parliament, the Chancellery of the President of the Republic, the National Audit Office, the Chancellery of the Chancellor of Justice and the Supreme Court) and the institutions in their administrative area; legal entities of the central government (a public legal entity defined as a central government unit, a foundation established by the state and a company with state participation).
Local government – the right, ability and obligation of the democratically formed authorities of a self-governing unit - municipality or city - to independently organize and manage local life on the basis of laws and the legitimate needs and interests of the residents of the municipality or city and taking into account the peculiarities of the development of the municipality or city.
A public service institution, or public authority, is an institution financed from the budget of the state or local government unit, whose task is to exercise public authority.
Managed institution – state institutions financed from the state budget, whose main task is not to exercise executive state power, but on the basis of the law, state institutions managed by government institutions can exercise executive state power. State institutions managed by government agencies belong under a ministry's jurisdiction.