When we need to access a public administration to carry out any type of management, most of us have no choice but to head down and do exactly what they tell us, with practically no right to reply, as if the officials were the ones who set the rules, when it really is not the case, since they are really the ones who are at our service, not us at theirs.
Public administrations work on the basis of a standard that grants them competence to carry out their work. The problem is that some of the obligations to which we are subjected, are not based on a standard established, so they really cannot require us to perform certain tasks such as the ones we show you below.
Request an appointment
As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, the public administrations decided that anyone who wanted to visit the public administrations had to make an appointment. However, there is no regulation that obliges them to interact with citizens in this way. In addition, they cannot force us to request the appointment through a digital method (either a browser or an application) as at present, since it discriminates against people who do not have access to technology.
Forcing users to request a prior appointment violates the rights of citizens to go to public administrations to carry out any type of procedure since they are impediments for us to be able to exercise our rights and comply with our obligations effectively as established by law.
Lack of documentation
If when we present documentation to a public body, we are missing one that has been issued by another body, we do not have the obligation to personally take care of carrying out the necessary procedures to obtain it and present the documentation again, since these are obligated to get in touch with each other request any documentation that has been issued by them.
In the past, when the administrations did not have the current telematic infrastructures, it did make sense to invite the user to request the necessary documentation to take it from one organization to another, only to expedite the procedures. What is clear is that, if we want the processes to be carried out as quickly as possible, it is advisable to personally present all the necessary documentation if we do not want to be at the expense of the carelessness of some public officials.
We can denounce
If the public official who attends us refuses to request documentation that we lack processing from another public administration, we can denounce the administration and request compensation, as stated by the Supreme Court a few days ago. According to article 106 of the Constitution, public administrations are obliged to compensate citizens if they do not correctly process the documents or if they are required to have documentation that other State administrations have.