The State Chancellery is a central public administration institution directly subordinated to the Prime Minister.
The State Chancellery is headed by its director, who is a top-rank official appointed to and dismissed from the post by the Cabinet order and upon recommendation of the Prime Minister. The Director and other civil servants of the State Chancellery are appointed to the post in line with the "State Civil Service Law".
The State Chancellery comprises Prime Minister’s Office, departments, divisions and individual units set up by the Director of the State Chancellery. The State Chancellery ensures and controls compliance of policy documents and draft legal acts of the Cabinet with the effective requirements; develops and implements policy action plans in various areas and presents opinions on policy documents and legal acts, as well as technically arranges activities of the Cabinet of Ministers.
Subordinate institution of the State Chancellery is the Latvian School of Public Administration (since 1 January 2003).
From 1 March 2023, the State Chancellery has taken over the functions of the Cross-Sectoral Coordination Centre (planning of sustainable development of Latvia, monitoring of the implementation of the government declaration, as well as governance of state-owned enterprises).
The State Chancellery is the centre of government of Latvia – it is a set of institutions or one institution with a task to ensure the work of the government and to provide the Prime Minister and the government with data and research-based information, based on data analysis, evaluation of different scenarios of action and attracting experts from different areas, thereby contributing to more accurate, fact-based decisions.
The State Chancellery’s functions include:
- Providing substantive and organisational support to ensure work of the Cabinet of Ministers - organising sittings of the Cabinet of Ministers, ensuring drafting of the Cabinet of Ministers’ documents in line with the procedures established by the laws and regulations, managing the records of the Cabinet of Ministers;
- Drafting of national-level development planning documents, supervising and coordinating the implementation thereof;
- Developing, organising and coordinating the public administration development policy, the human resource development policy of public administration, the communication policy of public administration, including the strategic communication policy, and the policy for governance of state-owned capital companies and state-owned shares;
- Ensuring coordination and monitoring of the implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals in national development planning;
- Exercising the tasks of a coordinating authority as laid down in the Law on Governance of Capital Shares of a Public Person and Capital Companies and other regulatory enactments;
- Monitoring and analysis of sectoral policies;
- Representing the Republic of Latvia in international investment disputes;
- Ensuring administration of the European Union funds and foreign financial assistance programmes and measures, as well as implementing these programmes and relevant projects in the areas of public administration development and human resource development in public administration;
- Facilitating the civil society development and public participation, including civil and social dialogue.