One Stop Shops:

Improving better business environment and

competitiveness

Training session: for Regional Investment Office Staffs

Date: November, 2018
 Overview

• Regulatory processes: Best approaches for competitiveness

• OSS fundamentals

• Scope

• Challenges

• Good experiences: Examples

• Common features of good OSS country examples

• Set up of OSS

• Interactive: Comparison of EIC OSS

Inside out Regulatory Regulatory processes: Conceptual Outside-in Regulatory
Process set-up Process set-up
comparison

World: Moving towards competitiveness

Investors
Government
requirements

Public
Public good
good protection
protection
• Simple
• Can be complicated
• Easily understood by
• Confusing to investors
Investors
• Ineffective protecting
• Effective public good
public good Government
protection
• Redundant
• Coordinated requirements
Investors • Uncompetitive
• Competitive
 UNCTAD World Investment Report (First half of 2016) FDI yearly
performance:
Reforms to attract investments

• Most new investment policy measures continue to be geared towards

investment liberalization and promotion
•
• In 2015, 85 per cent of measures were favorable to investors.
Emerging economies in Asia were most active in investment
liberalization, across a broad range of industries

• Where new investment restrictions or regulations were introduced,

these mainly rejected concerns about foreign ownership in strategic
industries

• A noteworthy feature in new measures was also the adoption or

revision of investment laws, mainly in some African countries
 One Stop Shop (OSS) Fundamentals

• OSS: Meant to improve business environment and promote/attract investment to a country

• In all cases, government led

• Became popular worldwide in the 1980s

• Mostly located within Investment Promotion Agencies to leverage these institution promotional/facilitation culture

• Goal is to provide regulatory and facilitation delivery to investors to make their business easier to operate: Platform for
competitiveness

• Many county advertise and promote their particular One Stop Shops but few have been successful in achieving the
ultimate goal: To make life easier to the investors

• Two types of OSS: Virtual and Real

 Virtual: Most common. Integration of all line authorities involved in the regulatory process
 Real: One legal mandated entity responsible for providing all regulatory services
 Usual OSS scope

• Services delivered through OSSs are usually the following (Not exclusive other
services may be included depending on government strategic goals):

 Company creation
 Registering a business
 Securing sector licenses required by line agencies
 Accessing land
 Securing visas and labor permits for expatriate workers
 Accessing land
 Aftercare support
 Accessing utilities service
 Other preoperational operational service and investor aftercare
 Challenges:
Notes on OSS, from the World Bank

• Many governments tried to implement an OSS encountered significant resistance by the various government agencies
responsible for the different administrative procedures

• Other ministries and agencies fear that the creation of an OSS would result in curtailing their authority and mandate,
quickly leading to intensive turf battles within the government bureaucracy.

• Governments tend to rely on some form of coordination mechanism where the various authorities maintain their existing
mandates and responsibilities.

• In many cases, ...authorities...only delegate junior staff to the OSS who do not have sufficient authority to actually grant
approvals.

• This, in fact, means that [t]he OSS is simply a mailbox operation, where the investor submits his paperwork just to pursue
it directly with the relevant authority in order to see his application through. The “One-Stop Shop” has actually turned
into a “one more stop”....

• Overall, the most important function of an OSS ...lies in the possibility of identifying shortcomings in the administrative
implementation of a country’s investment policy bottlenecks and providing value service for both government and the
investors
 Evolving concept:
Good experiences of OSS

• The most outstanding and well-know examples of OSS systems that have been successful are usually the
following:

 The Economic Development Board (EDB) of Singapore

 The Industrial Development Authority (IDA)of Ireland
 Malaysian Industrial Development Authority (MIDA)

• Other countries with similar but not the same structure of OSS type service:

 New Zealand
 Canada
 Australia
 Dubai

• Following examples of OSS experiences are outcomes, process of today’s results are reflection of accumulated
experiences, constant reforms and many mistakes
 Different OSS types, same goals
In most good practice examples, customers can access an online ‘one stop shop’ for start-up and registration, and another for
licensing requirements; application and approvals are decentralized

New Zealand Canada Singapore Australia Dubai Comments

Start-up and All benchmarks offer an online “one

Registration stop shop

Requirements Canada, Singapore, Australia: Single

interface online source of requirements. In
New Zealand, customers interface with
regional and local entities to obtain
requirements.

Singapore: Online “one stop shop” for

Applications and the vast majority of businesses.
approvals Canada, New Zealand, and Australia:
Online access to various approval
authorities.
Legend
Dubai: Customers obtain full licensing
requirements and complete
Federal Entity Provincial, Territorial or Municipal Entity
applications with relevant government
authorities.
 Common themes for top OSS examples

Risk-based approach to reduce  Low risk activities may not require approvals or inspections
requirements  The number of entities involved is limited
Processes sequenced based on the  The activities required to register a business are separate from the activities required to license a business
business lifecycle  Limited licensing activities are required during the operation or closure of a business
Simplified registration process  Activities required for a business or investor to register as a legal entity are clear, simple and quick

Enable accessibility  Customers have easy and convenient access to regulatory services, including digital or online access, over the
phone or face-to-face
Transparency, clarity & predictability  Customers can understand why decisions have been made, or fees incurred
 Customers are clear on the steps required to complete an application, and the status of an application
 The time and cost of getting a regulatory product is predictable, and decisions are consistent
Procedural efficiency  Processing times and costs are appropriate to the application
 Administrative burden for the customer is minimized
Customer-centric performance  Performance of the system is measured from the customer perspective, driving improvements to the overall
management and governance customer experience
 Mandates, SLAs, MOUs and governance bodies are defined to understand and improve outcomes for
customers
Specific sector focus  The design of the system takes into account the needs of specific sectors, e.g. SMEs or foreign investors

Complete ‘one stop shop’  The customer has only one interaction point, from which all enquiries, transactions and approvals can be
completed
 OSS Design principles
Regulatory processes and requirements are sequenced based on the business lifecycle, increasing simplicity and clarity
for customers

Key design principles for reducing administrative burden:

• Processes sequenced based on the business lifecycle

Overview of the business lifecycle (high level)

Stage 1: Stage 2: Stage 3: Stage 4:
Registering an entity Starting a business Business operations Exiting a business

 Trade name  Entry requirements  Construction permits  Selling or divesting

 Legal incorporation  Minimum Capital  Inspection processes  Bankruptcy and/or
Operational technical Reorganization
 VAT  Licenses/permits/land
requirements
use requirements  Liquidation
compliance monitoring
(zoning)
 Technical Requirements  Tax payments
 Access to Finance
 Common features of OSS examples
Supporting customer accessibility, transparency, clarity, predictability and procedural efficiency

Overview of the business lifecycle (high level)

Stage 1: Stage 2: Stage 3: Stage 4:

Registering an entity Starting a business Business operations Exiting a business

Accessibility  Online resources and  Easy to follow instructions, enabled online or by email
tools for start-ups  Consistent information and service delivery at all touch points
Customer-centric features

 Real-time publication of news and updates

Transparency,  Registration clearly  Estimates provided for fees and timeframes for issuing licenses
clarity & separated from  Single source of information and requirements
predictability other Regulatory  Compliance checklists and details of fines and penalties
products such as
licensing
Procedural  Same day business  Licenses typically approved within 2-4 weeks (from 1 week to 8 weeks)
efficiency registration  License fees are calculated and paid at the start of the process
 Requirements for amending, renewing and cancelling licenses are streamlined

Enabled by:
Customer-centric performance measures
Customer-centric governance mechanisms
 OSS set-up requirements

• Operationalizing the OSS

 Develop clearly stated regulations that effectively make mandate of the Law/Proclamation implementable
 Differentiate Single Window entry point for investors and OSS Back office process
o Normally the Single Window is the client contact point with no communication with no interface with the
back office personnel
 Define the information required from the client clearly and without space for interpretation
 Provide information to the investor
 Developing integrated single form that eliminate redundancies/repetitions
 Define the relationships between other government agencies involved in the process and mandating interagency
service agreements that define:
o Roles of agencies in the OSS process
o Agencies technical requirements for investment clearance and compliance monitoring
o Decision levels in the process
o Scope and work of seconded personnel when required
o Delegation of powers to the OSS based on pre-approved technical requirements
 OSS set-up requirements (Continued)

• Establish time-bound condition to answer within the internal process and deemed approvals within that time-bound
condition

 Difficult to achieve
 Can be controversial
 Places burden of performance on the government
 If achieved strengthen credibility and transparency in the eyes of the investors

• Appeal process to ensure avoidance of arbitrary decision and providing on the ground feed-back from the client base
(Voice of the Customer)

 Minimizes deviances from the established process

 OSS set-up requirements (Continued)

• Creating an efficient Workflow System

 Develop Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) defining the process workflow

 SOPs should be designed to instruct officers responsible for implementing the system how to actually do their job
uniformly and consistently
 Standardize work flow eliminating discretionary applications of the regulatory mandates while ensuring
transparency
 Preparation of internal and external forms and templates that clearly set out the sequence of internal steps of the
workflow to document the process and enable tracking of files status
 Interactive:
EIC OSS comparison

• Differentiation a function of Single Window and OSS back-office process

• Investor access of the OSS

• Clear delegation of powers and secondment

• Clearly defined process and availability of information to the investor

• SOPs availability

• Non-repetitive process steps

• Clear and non-repetitive forms

• Process electronic enablement

• Timeline for service delivery to the client

• Others?
Thank you!