Comptroller: 'Too much bureaucracy in building safe rooms'

Only 2% of requests to build new safe rooms in existing residential units were fast-tracked for approval in 2022, even though 22% met the standards, State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman reported Monday.

This statistic and some other numbers in the State Comptroller’s Report painted the picture of an IDF Home Front and government apparatus that are drowning in bureaucracy and paperwork in a period when rocket threats are greater than ever, rather than seeking to speed up the process to potentially save lives with more safe rooms.

Red tape required for safe room

The report was supposed to be published months ago, but the process of making it and many other State Comptroller’s Reports public was delayed until now due to the war.

Another number that showed the level of red tape exhibited in the process of approving the building of safe rooms from rockets was that 60% of requests were sent back for adjustments.

Any time there is an adjustment before an approval, as opposed to an approval to allow aspects of a process to go forward in parallel to fixing technical shortcomings in an application, the comptroller said it means significant delays in building the safe room.

Whereas regulations say processing requests should take 18 days, processing requests took an average of three to four months, the report said.

There are almost inherently many exceptional situations in urban settings related to expanding to build safe rooms to protect from rocket fire, such as an unusually high percentage of requests fail the standard model that the inspection process could otherwise streamline, the report said.

Once a request falls out of the general inspection process, it is forwarded to IDF Home Front Command, where it is virtually guaranteed to wait and languish for significantly longer, it said.

Comptroller's recommendations 

Englman recommended that the IDF and the government train far more persons to carry out the streamlined inspection process so that fewer applications get transferred to the IDF and are delayed.

The report also said the IDF should further empower non-IDF inspectors to handle certain kinds of “exceptions” so that they will be able to resolve at least some larger percentage of issues and avoid the current situation in which the majority of applications end up with the IDF or needing adjustments.

To date, for the years 2018-2022, there were only 46 inspectors certified to handle the issue outside of the IDF, and the comptroller was not impressed even by their performance level.

Still, Englman said Home Front Command should remain the final address for managing the issue of safe rooms due to its unique security expertise.

Only 14% of funds for soldiers suffering from PTSD provided

In response to the report’s criticism of approving safe rooms, Home Front Command said it “has begun the process of introducing changes and improvements to the online licensing system to adapt it to its [the IDF’s] needs. Among other things, a ‘system of administrators’ is being assessed in favor of compiling accurate data that would allow rapid change and correction of anomalies.”

“The IDF is examining ways to further improve the response by contacting the planners directly,” it said, adding that Home Front Command is pressing “to receive additional resources to streamline supervision and control to improve the level of competence of the controllers.”

“In the coming weeks, the IDF will communicate its position regarding the amendment of the law to expand” the discretionary powers of the apparatus to streamline various exceptional issues that repeat themselves, it added.

In a separate report on the IDF’s handling of disabled veterans and post-traumatic stress disorder, Englman said only one-third of the funds budgeted for the “one soul” reform to help IDF veterans had been provided. Even worse, only 14% of the funds allocated for PTSD were provided, he said.

Next, the report criticized that it took the government and the country 18 years to pass reform legislation to update the rights of disabled IDF veterans.

In addition, a survey taken of disabled IDF veterans found that 53 out of 100 felt their needs were being addressed satisfactorily.

Giving a small window into the state of recognizing disabled veterans’ rights through July 2023, before the current war, the report said 5,959 files were being evaluated.

Between 74%-80% of disabled veterans said they were not aware or did not fully understand their rights.

The Defense Ministry said it has already responded to criticism and implemented solutions to issues identified in the report.

For example, it said, 90% of more than 4,000 wounded soldiers during the current war were given at least preliminary rights as disabled IDF personnel from the first day they were hospitalized. This move required removing significant amounts of standard bureaucratic procedures and barriers, it added.

Furthermore, the Defense Ministry said it was spending NIS 450 million to provide 90 new services to disabled soldiers.

In addition, the ministry said this past year finally saw new legislation for disabled soldiers’ rights addressing their needs in the areas of funding for residential living and medical needs. Additional issues, such as more funding for PTSD, were still awaiting final Knesset approval, it said.

The Defense Ministry said its new, more user-friendly process since the war started has led to disabled soldiers having a much more favorable view of their treatment.

Regarding other issues, the ministry implied that the Finance Ministry was holding up necessary funds for further action.