The Justice Ministry presented the most red tape of seven different government offices surveyed for the Federation of Israeli Chambers of Commerce’s Bureaucracy Index in the first quarter. However, the survey, which was released Wednesday, found there has been a marked improvement across the ministries in their bureaucratic management.The Transportation Ministry maintained its position at the top of the index, with a score of 7.12 out of a possible 10. It was followed by the Interior Ministry (7.03), Industry, Trade and Labor Ministry (6.92), National Insurance Institute (6.72), Health Ministry (6.38) and Finance Ministry (6.36). The Justice Ministry scored just 5.80 to finish in last place.Since the index was first published in September 2008, the average score given to ministries has risen from 6.5 to the current level of 6.62, after peaking at 6.79 in the first quarter of 2010.This was the first time the Justice Ministry was included in the index, which is carried out by service-quality company SQ and the Geocartography Institute on the FICC’s behalf.The index is based on a survey of 700 business people and ranks each office by how they interact with the business sector according to four categories: availability of customerservice representatives, the amount of time it takes to attend to each case, the level of personal attention and the quality of solutions offered.<div style="margin-left: 15px; margin-top: 5px; margin-bottom: 0px; float: right; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); width: 300px; height: 250px">var zflag_nid='794'; var zflag_cid='1091/988'; var zflag_sid='122'; var zflag_width='300'; var zflag_height='250'; var zflag_sz='9'; The Justice Ministry was actually found to be the easiest from which to receive information. However, it was the most bogged down by bureaucracy when it came to dealing with individual cases. On average it took 16.6 weeks for the ministry to deal with business queries, far longer than the period of four weeks that members of the business sector said would be a reasonable amount of time. SQ’s Shy Hayun, who is responsible for the index, praised the Justice Ministry for being the first to volunteer itself for assessment. “It shows that they are open-minded,” he told The Jerusalem Post by telephone. “What I expect that will happen now is that they will take the index’s findings on board and that they will now check how they can improve.”
