The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection submitted to the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia the Report on the Implementation of the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance in 2008. That regular report, which the Commissioner submits for every year within three months after it ends pursuant to Article 36 of the Law, is posted on Commissioner's website in the menu "Documents", submenu "Reports"; it can also be accessed via the following link: izvestaj-za-08.pdf
In connection with this, Commissioner Rodoljub Sabic said the following:
"The Report is based on experiences and observations from the Commissioner's practice and on about 650 annual reports which were submitted to the Commissioner by public authorities from different levels. Basically, it contains nothing particularly new because it confirms existence of trends and problems which previous reports indicated as well.
Data from about 650 reports submitted to the Commissioner show that in 2008 almost 56,000 requests for access to information were submitted to public authorities, which is over 6 times more than in 2007 and almost 10 times more than in 2006. Of course, these data are not absolutely correct (a large number of public authorities did not even submit reports), but they are certainly comparable to previous periods and they are highly indicative. They confirm an undoubtedly good, positive trend of growing public awareness of the content of the right to free access to information and readiness to use that right.
Unfortunately, data also show that problems identified a long time ago persist. It is still difficult to change awareness of public authorities of their duties towards the public, a large number of requests for protection of rights have been submitted to the Commissioner: in 2008 slightly more than 1,500 cases were registered. Also, virtually none of the problems I indicated in previous reports, from those regarding logistic and financial assumptions for Commissioner's work to those regarding administrative obstructions and normative deficiencies important for exercise of the right to access to information, was removed.
As in previous years, the report contains recommendations the adoption of which would contribute to enhanced implementation of the law. They pertain to activation of mechanisms for liability for violating the law and for enforcing Commissioner's rulings, passing necessary laws and regulations, providing financial, logistic and other assumptions for the work on the implementation of the law. On this occasion I would like to underscore a recommendation pertaining to taking measures which would enable, on proactive basis and without specific requests from the public, publishing as much as possible documents on operations of the Government in directories on the Internet."
