The Administrative Capacity Operational Programme would be priority number one for the State Administration Ministry in 2008, State Administration Minister Nikolai Vassilev told Focus news agency in an interview.

The building of the e-government and mass training of administrative personnel would be the second priority, while providing better administrative service would be third, Vassilev said.

“Optimising the state administration will be a priority for us as well – this is very important to our ministry, but unfortunately success here depends more on factors outside of the ministry than inside it. The cutting down on personnel in our system will be done in the next couple of weeks, but whether we will succeed in making other administrations do this is more of a political issue of national importance than a ministerial one,” Vassilev told Focus.