The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection Rodoljub Sabic has sent a letter to the Government of Serbia on the Draft Regulation on the establishment of single register of public employees, indicating some open issues and concerns in relation to this act.
In this regard, the Commissioner stated the following:
"By supporting the Government's efforts aimed at structural reform of the public sector and with no desire to engage in the assessment of the Ministry of Finance regarding the effects of adoption of the Regulation, due to the fact that the Commissioner was not consulted about its contents, with this letter I pointed out to some open issues.
The proposed regulation, among other things, establishes a new, huge database of personal data, which includes dozens of types of information about each employee, elected, appointed or otherwise engaged person. And without going into the rationale and justification for the formation of such mega data file representing a collection of many data files that exist and will continue to exist, there is an important legal question - could this data file of personal data be established by an act such as a regulation ?
Article 42 of the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia explicitly states: "Protection of personal data shall be guaranteed. Collecting, keeping, processing and using of personal data shall be regulated by the law." Regulation, of course, is not a law; and nor the provision of the Budget System Law, Article 93a, which the Regulation refers to, says anything specific about the nature, type and amount of personal data, but contains only "fluid", quite vague formulation.
Register of data on the number of employees and persons engaged in the public sector and the exact amount paid as their salaries, allowances and benefits certainly could (and without a large database of personal data) help to achieve the desired goals regarding the monitoring of expenditures for public employees. A legal basis for the establishment of such a register exists since December 2009 in the Law on determining the maximum number of employees in the Republican administration. "
