In the process of obtaining the right to an invalidity pension under the Pension and Disability Insurance Act, expert opinions on disability, residual work capacity and the suitability of other work are required, which are given by the expert bodies of the Pension and Disability Insurance Institute of Slovenia (ZPIZ). The expert bodies are required by the Regulation on the Organisation and Method of Operation of the Disability Commissions and Other Expert Bodies of the Pension and Disability Insurance Institute (Official Gazette of the National Pension and Disability Insurance Institute of Slovenia, Ur. The disability commissions of the Social Insurance Institution for Pension and Social Security (Pensions and Social Security Institution for Social Insurance and Social Security Institution for Disability Insurance), which are organised within the expert sector of the Institution, include the Level I disability commissions, which operate within the Level I expert services. The procedure is initiated when ZPIZ receives the request with the insured person's complete work documentation and the obligatory medical documentation on the insured person's state of health and his/her ability to work.When ZPIZ receives the request to claim disability insurance benefits, it starts to obtain the work documentation, which must be completed and submitted by the insured person and his/her employer, or by the Employment Service of the Republic of Slovenia if the insured person is unemployed. If the professional establishes from the official records of the Social Insurance Institution that the insured person is employed in another area, he/she refers the matter, on a territorial basis, to the unit 'locally competent' for the solution and the latter continues with the procedure of collecting the documentation. When the required employment documentation arrives, the collecting unit refers it back to the unit in whose area the insured person is resident, so that the latter can invite the insured person and the employer to a hearing in order to give an expert opinion. After the expert opinion has been given, the Invalidity Committee shall refer the case back to the 'locally competent unit' for a decision. I believe that this procedure could have been avoided in the light of Article 19(1) of the General Administrative Procedure Act (GAPA), which expressly empowers ministries to decide on administrative matters in the whole territory of the country (in this case, the Ministry of Labour, Family and Social Affairs). However, Article 253 of the Law on Pension and Invalidity Insurance (ZPIZ-1-UPB4) establishes local jurisdiction, stating that "the unit of the institution in the territory of which the person claiming the right or from which the right is exercised was last insured shall decide on insurance rights in the first instance". However, since the work of the disability commissions falls within the competence of the Expertise Division, which is organised at the headquarters of the Institute, with its own service and its disability commissions in decentralised units throughout Slovenia, the assessment procedure (from the collection of the necessary documentation to the summoning of the insured person to the disability commission for examination) could take place at the unit where the claim was lodged.The proposal of the new ZPIZ was supposed to abolish this competence, but it was not adopted. Therefore, this administrative obstacle should definitely be removed and perhaps the local jurisdiction should be abolished by an amendment to the law, at least as far as the decision is issued. In this way, the unit receiving the application could, simply because the insured person lives in the area of that unit, carry out the entire procedure of obtaining the documentation and only send it to the competent unit for a decision after the expert opinion has been given. This would avoid the unnecessary costs of having to send the dossier from one unit to another, and the non-short time lost in the same procedure (according to layman's calculations, the time from dispatch from the main office of one unit to reception by the expert who continues the procedure in the other unit is about 5 working days, which is at best at least 15 working days of delayed time).Given that we are in a period when public sector reform is also (and above all) about cutting costs and shortening administrative procedures, this intermediate procedure should be abolished, as it is irrational in terms of cost and time, i.e. in terms of the efficiency and effectiveness of public sector operations. Last but not least, and by no means least, it is important to take account of the values that the modern public sector has adopted, one of which is user-orientation, accessibility and transparency. In this particular case, it may happen that, for example, a client wants to consult his documentation, but we have sent it from Maribor to Jesenice because he is employed in that area. If we want to allow the client to do so, we have two options: a) send it to Jesenice, b) ask the client to come back in a week when we (if we) obtain the documentation from another unit.In view of the above, I consider that the procedure described is just an administrative obstacle that causes unnecessary costs, prolongs the duration of the procedures and does not have any positive impact on the satisfaction of users and on the reputation of the public sector.