USAID, Albanian Municipality Partnership Brings One-Stop Services to Citizens

One young woman stands and another is seated next to a computer in an office setting
Korça’s One-Stop Shop will allow individuals and businesses throughout the municipality to make requests for up to 73 municipal services.
Durim Tabaku, USAID Planning and Local Governance Project

For Immediate Release

Friday, March 4, 2016

KORCA, ALBANIA     The Mayor of Korça, Sotiraq Filo and USAID Albania’s General Development Officer, Dennis Wesner, today launched an innovative, citizen-centric municipal services center for individuals and businesses throughout the municipality. The service center operates from 13 different service points throughout the municipality and will provide residents from the city and its seven suburban and rural administrative units (former communes) access 73 different services from nearly a dozen different municipal departments.

Participants in the event included municipal staff, administrators from administrative units, Citizen Advisory Panel (CAP) members, Peace Corps volunteers and others invited by the municipality as well as representatives from the donor community and members of the STAR (Support to Territorial Administrative Reform) Project Steering Committee. On behalf of the Government of Albania, the STAR Project is seeking to replicate the One-Stop Shop model in all of Albania’s 61 municipalities.

USAID provided significant support and assistance to Korça in designing, developing, and implementing its One-Stop Shop to improve the efficiency, transparency and accountability of local government operations.

Administrative procedures that used to require multiple visits to various municipal departments can now be taken care of at Korca’s One-Stop Shop for citizen services. 

The One-Stop Shop, launched in March 2016 with the support of the USAID, operates from 13 different service points, at city hall, five different locations within the central city, and significantly, in each of Korça’s seven suburban and rural administrative units. 
As a new way of delivering local government services, Korca’s One-Stop Shop exemplifies responsiveness, convenience, transparency, and cost-effectiveness for both citizens and the municipal government. Here, the Municipality will offer 73 services from 11 different Municipal Departments, including Finance; Local Taxes and Tariffs; Social Protection; Law; Territorial Planning and Development; Contract Management; Human Resources; and Public Relations.

Some of the services include, issuing building permits, business licenses, and residence verifications. It can also accept service requests, citizen complaints, reports of illegal construction, and many other citizen inquiries and messages. Each service point operates from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. during the weekdays.

A public website provides accurate information on required forms, and allows users to access some services online, as well as track the status of all of their requests by ID number. An internal operations manual for the OSS’s employees details the procedures and customer service standards for all 73 of the services provided.