Source: Blic
Rodoljub Sabic, Commissioner for Information
Recently, like every year in March, the Commissioner for Information submitted to the Assembly of Serbia the annual report on the enforcement of the Law on Free Access to Information. Like the previous report, this one will also confirm that the right to free access to information is used more and more, on a continuous basis. The number of requests for the access to information submitted to different levels of the authorities is 50 per cent higher than in the previous year and around 4.5 times higher than in 2005. Around 30 per cent more cases were worked upon and resolved at the Commissioner's office than during the last year. Also, the relation of the authorities towards some formal obligations, such as the submission of reports, publishing of the Informer on the work done and the education of the human resources is somewhat better.
While assessing the statistical data as encouraging, the report states that the authorities did not do much of what they not only could do, but also had to do, and it offers the recommendations the adoption of which could help correct the observed flaws and errors. It is “interesting” that the 2005 and 2006 reports, respectively, gave the identical recommendations. Although they were adopted at the parent Assembly Committee without reservations, this remained without any effect, thus not even the chronic errors, that have been evident for three years, have been corrected. Isn't it true that the smartest thing is to learn from the mistakes of the others? That learning from one's own mistakes is much more expensive, and that ignoring the mistakes, not doing anything about them, is the most expensive thing of them all. Is this questionable for anybody among us? Or, is it that the point lies in the fact that the bill is paid by the citizens and not by those who err and will not learn?
