The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance addressed a letter today to all presidents of Serbian municipalities, alerting them to the obligations of public authorities under the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance.
On this occasion, Commissioner Rodoljub Sabic said:
“While progress has been made since the last year, overall, we have little reason to be satisfied with the enforcement of the right of free access to information. The reports we received and other available information indicate that local self-government bodies face particular problems in the implementation of the FOI Law. The fact that hardly 55% of all municipalities have complied with the legal obligation to file annual reports on implementation of the FOI Law needs no further comment. It is my duty to draw the attention of managers of executive local bodies to these problems and to remind them of their obligations under the Law.
The rules on processing information requests under Article 16 of the FOI Law are very often breached. The Commissioner has received many complaints relating to the so-called “silence of administration”, even though this is not allowed and even entails infringement liability. Request refusals are often issued as notifications, instead as resolution with rationale and instructions of available legal action, as required under the Law. In nearly half of all complaints, information is given immediately after the Commissioner has intervened, which shows that often some good will is all it takes to observe the public interest to know and to avoid unnecessary administrative action.
While Article 38 of the FOI Law specifies that public authorities are to appoint one or more authorized officials to process information requests, this has been done only in some 60 municipalities.
Under Article 39 of the Law, all public authorities are required to prepare and publish directories of their affairs. The number of municipalities that complied with this requirement this year (51) is twice higher than in 2005, but still remains below one third of the total number of municipalities, which is absolutely unacceptable in the third year of implementation of the Law.
Articles 41 and 42 of the Law lay down specific obligations of public authorities in connection with staff training and regular maintenance of information storage media from the aspect of their public availability. The current level of observance of these obligations gives little reason for satisfaction. Staff education, an activity that has hitherto relied solely on the activities of the Commissioner for Information, in collaboration with the NGO sector, will require much more efforts in the future.
The key obligation of public authorities at all levels is to create the assumptions for the exercise of citizens' rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution and the law. Consequently, even if we put aside the fact that the Law envisages legal action against all who fail to observe these obligations, the public rightly expects all actual and made-up problems in terms of human resources, logistics, finance etc. to be removed and to see the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance implemented consistently.“
