Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection spoke today with Lawrence Vetter, USAID JRGA Project Manager (Judiciary Refom and Government Accountability Project) and his collaborators about support the USAID can and intends to render to the Commissioner's activities.
Evaluating the meeting as very successful, and the USAID support as welcome and very useful, the Commissioner, Rodoljub Sabic also stated:
„Several topics were discussed during talks, among which I would especially underline three.
The first topic was the desire of JRGA to render support to the Commissioner and to the Working Group within already initiated activities in preparing the Model Law on Protecting Whistleblowers. Because the necessary funds have already been secured by Great Britain and Netherlands, and the Project implementation is under way (analysis has been performed of all, even potentialy relevant provisions within our legal system, and in the next month we expect foreign expert analysis of comparative law solutions regarding protection of whistleblowers in six different national legislations) we talked that the possible contribution of JRGA could be reflected in expert analysis of some specifically American legal solutions, primarily, solutions that besides dealing with protection also deal with rewarding the whistleblowers.
The second topic was support of JRGA to Commissioner's endeavours to enhance transparency in the work of courts, especially of magistrates' courts which are more than the others facing material, logistics and similar problems. We have acknowledged that there is a real possibility to create, with JRGA's support, quality e-portal for magistrates' courts network, where written information about the work of all magistrates' courts shall be published.
The third topic was privacy protection, that is, personal data protection. Pertaining to the topic I have gladly received the information from my guests that JRGA has already approved funds for Project „Evaluation of Procedures and Policies in the Personal Data Protection Field" which shall be implemented by non-govermental sector organizations and experts. I believe that the results of the Project shall be useful as another warning, that is, as a confirmation of already several times publicly announced warnings of the Commissioner of bad, completely dissatisfying status in this field, and as a stimulus to start improving that status as soon as possible."
