The press-conference held by representatives of civil society organizations was committed to reforming title deeds registration in Ukraine.

In April 2014, the members of the task force called Monitoring of Civil Society Reforms invited prominent Georgian experts proposing them to contribute to this work by sharing their own experience and best practices on how to reorganize a corrupt post-Soviet government system.

Among the experts is Jaba Ebanoidze, earlier today he presented the concept of the civil society reform concerning the registration of title deeds in Ukraine.

The leading expert is of the opinion that a similar reform embedded in Georgia 7 years ago might be useful to Ukraine, given that initial conditions were alike.

The underlying principle of this concept is distribution of functions between two types of public registrars: one group – to be in charge of giving an advice and accepting applications, and another – registering. So, the registration itself should be performed by front-office staff (to give an advice and accept an application) and back-office employees (to perform registration).

In his opinion, this reform, if implemented, should firstly release the registrars from a burden already assumed making it possible to perform only respective obligations; secondly, this might help decrease corruption risks, because registrars won’t communicate with clients face-to-face; and thirdly, this can speed up the approval process. 

It has been proposed that front-offices should work only in district units, while back-offices – in oblast branches.

To succeed in eliminating corruption risks, it is critical to ensure an equable and, even more important, random distribution of applications between registrars by using the so called random draw, when a registrar, conceptually, cannot know whose application will be considered.

Jaba Ebanoidze believes that the concept presented is a sort of draft reform to be further worked out; however, the task force with representatives of the Ministry of Justice should soon discuss and scrutinize particular measures.