Background

Until the middle of 1998 the trade licenses for wine, alcohol and alcoholic drinks, tobacco products and transport delivery services were processed manually. The data for the companies and their official representatives was recorded on paper and the documents themselves were typewritten. All this has posed a lot of difficulties - slow processing of the official documents, impossibility for quick indication of the data authenticity, slow data verification. The users of the documents were often able to misuse or act unlawfully by copying or counterfeiting them. All these facts have brought to the necessity of creating a new technology for processing the license documents.

Practice

The above mentioned difficulties have lead to the creation of a Licenses Database which facilitates services to citizens and companies in the process of granting and controlling documents connected with licenses, permissions for performing certain activities, and give information for sanctions imposed for committed offences. The database is realized due to the Axter - Municipal Licenses software pack, produced on the request of the Municipality of Blagoevgrad, based on a client-server technology. This technology allows the free access and usage of the stored information by numerous users simultaneously and in accordance with their access rights.

The database keeps information about the companies, sites (including category information) and granted licenses, as well as information for imposed sanctions and penalty decrees. The database is updated daily. The work structure and organization with respect to the overall control and the issuing of the documents does not allow misappropriations or illegal acts from both municipal clerks or unconscientious citizens. The input of wrong company or person data is made impossible. The software allows also cancelling of suspended licenses and permissions. The main problems solved with the implementation of the system are:
granting of licenses through a special technology: there is a standard model for each type of license. It contains the information required in the normative documents, as well as additional information generated by a special technology, through which every official document issued has its own unique code. The documents are printed on a copy-protected paper;
imposing sanctions and penalty decrees in the cases when infractions at some trade outlets are ascertained; it is also valid for sites, liable to licensing after entering the data from the written statement of confirmation;
verification on granted or suspended licenses through acts issued (paid or not paid) for site categorization, for the trade outlets themselves, for the companies, etc.

Results

In October 1998 a new technology was implemented. It provides new, improved design of the documents issued, offers data security and possibility for complete control over the process of granting licenses or over the ones already issued. Up to this moment over 1500 alcohol and tobacco products trade licenses, more than 800 transport delivery services licenses and a lot of penalty decrees have been granted. The chances of making mistakes are strongly reduced and the counterfeit of documents is almost impossible.