The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance continues his activities on updating of the catalogue of public authorities, which has been published on his web site www.poverenik.org.rs several months ago. The catalogue, which includes about 11,000 subjects with the status of public authority, will, in addition to the names, head offices and addresses, include also the new addresses of electronic presentations of those authorities which have them after the shift from .yu to .rs domain names later this month.
On this occasion, Commissioner Rodoljub Šabic said:
“Making of these catalogues is not an obligation of the Commissioner for Information. This complex task is in other countries, as a rule, in competence of the government. But in our country, it seems that nobody is competent for that, so my associates started working on it and published the basic version of the catalogue several months ago. It has higher quality and is much better than most of the catalogues in the wider region. Work on it is continued by entering web sites of public authorities, taking into account the importance of Internet in modern times.
Results of this work should be of interest to citizens and journalists, but also to persons in positions of power, first of all in the Serbian Government, because they are indicative and worrying.
Setting aside the quality, some kind of quantitative improvement can be seen. For instance, finally all so-called highest government bodies (the National Assembly, the President, the Government, the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court, the Republic Public Prosecutor) have web sites (percentage is 100%). Also, 95.5% of ministries have web sites. All except the Ministry of Infrastructure. It is unbelievable that a body of this rank does not have a web site, especially since it is the ministry which implements and controls a large number of valuable works and projects and has huge financial resources, and it would be normal to expect it to show even higher responsibility in performing its duties towards the public. In other subjects percentage is lower, and 19 of 23 (82%) republic agencies has web site, 7 of 10 (70%) directorates, 9 of 17 (52%) independent regulatory bodies and 4 of 8 (50%) funds.
The best situation is in the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina. The Assembly and Executive Council and (17) provincial secretariats (100%) have web sites, and situation is similar in provincial public enterprises, institutions etc., where percentage is above 90%.
The situation is much worse and very inconsistent in local self-government. Over 90% of cities and 60% of municipalities have web presentations. In city municipalities, those that are part of cities, percentages vary from 0% in many cities, through, for example, 20% in Kragujevac or 40% in Niš, to 95% in Belgrade. It is indicative that, with all verbal care for Kosovo and Metohia, the town of Priština (with its seat in Gracanica), does not have a web presentation, and neither do virtually all other Kosovo and Metohia municipalities.
The situation is particularly bad in the judiciary. For instance, none of the 30 district public prosecutor's offices has a web site, and 4 of 30 (13.3%) district courts have web sites. Only 2 (1.9%) municipal public prosecutor's offices have web sites and only about 15 municipal courts (8.8%). Of 149 municipal magistrate's offices only 1 (0.6%) has a web site, and of 11 misdemeanour's councils also only 1 (9%) has one. I believe that this state of affairs is much more an expression of the financial situation of this branch of authority than a lack of will in people in the judiciary. With a little more enthusiasm things could be better even in difficult conditions - an example of this is the network of commercial courts of Serbia, most of which do not have they own web site, but they organized a joint portal with Higher Commercial Court were they are all represented.
Still, the main reason for worry is the quality of information posted on web sites of government bodies. Very often the information is not published, even if it is required by the Law (directories), while at the same time official electronic presentations of government bodies are frequently used for propaganda, indeed advertising, instead for documented informing of the public.”
