Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection has delivered to the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia Report on Implementation of the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance and the Personal Data Protection Act in 2010. That regular Report, which the Commissioner submits each year within three months after the year end, has been also published on the Commissioner’s web-site http://www.poverenik.org.rs/index.php/sr/doc/izvestaji.html. The same report has been, accordign to the law, delivered to the President of the Republic, Citizens’ Protector and to the Government of the Republic of Serbia.
Stressing the continuity of increasingly intensive addressing the Commissioner for protection of their rights, and that in 2010 more than 3,000 new cases have been processed, and just in the field of accessing information 2898 of them, which is an increase of more than 55% than in the previous year, that is, seven and a half times more than in 2005, the Commissioner, Rodoljub Sabic, stressed:
„Republic of Serbia is one of rare countries in which actually all the way until the end of 2008 there was not an existing law which would systematically regulate the personal data protection.
That lateness has directly influenced significantly different evaluations and statuses in two fields within the Commissioner’s authority. On the one hand, regardless of numerous problems to which the Report also points out, in the field of freedom to access information we have continuous progressive process, already for a couple of years now. Having in mind all the relevant circumstances, that positive process is judging by everything invertible, it just needs enhancement and maintenance of its continuity.
In that context, of special importance is to direct the efforts to affirming modern understanding of the essence of right to freely access information. That right, observed from the standpoint of the authorities in power, besides passive, must also have active component. It is not enough just to have the authorities in power correctly act in relation to requests for free access to information, but it is necessary that the authorities in power should publish as much information about their work as possible on a proactive basis, even without special requests. Modern technical appliances and means of e-communication significantly mitigate implementation of that idea. It is good that on that plan, as well, although with numerous problems, we have certain results.
On the other hand, in the field of personal data protection, we are almost at the very beginning. Negative effects of already mentioned lateness have been underlined by the fact that the Commissioner, who has otherwise worked with very small, completely inadequate number of collaborators, due to incredible omission of the Ministry of Finance, was devoid of opportunity to, during the first year of law implementation, engage new collaborators for work in the personal data protection field. Simultaneously, the Government and other state authorities didn’t execute the tasks determined for them by the Personal Data Protection Act.
Relationship of the society and of the state towards privacy, especially towards personal data protection must be radically changed. Therefore it is important, that regardless of everything, in 2010 we shall have the first more serious results in this field.“
