Conclusions of the regional conference „Access to Information and Open Data“

On 28th September 2016 Transparency International in Bosnia and Herzegovina (TI BiH) organized a regional conference entitled „Access to Information and Open Data“ on the occasion of the International Right to Know Day. The conference participants tried to make the principles and standards of the proactive transparency, openness and accountability closer to the attendees through the presentation of the research on the implementation of the Law on Free Access to Information in BiH and region and discussions.

The conference resulted in the following conclusions and recommendations:

– to strengthen the institution of the Administrative Inspectorate which primarily lacks the human resources
– to initiate the amendments to the existing Laws on Free Access to information in a sense of introducing proactive provisions
– in case of amending the existing regulation to take into account the fact that the entity Laws on Free Access to Information also contain inspection and penalty provisions
– to empower the existing institutional framework that takes care on the implementation of the Law on Free Access to Information
– most attendees fully supported the concept of proactive transparency and emphasized that in addition to strong political will, it also takes programs of strengthening public administration capacities and joint action of all government level institutions in order to achieve better results in the field of transparency, accountability and openness
– conference participants agreed that institutions may significantly benefit from the proactive announcement of data and information, since the problem of information flow, meaning that even the employees in public institutions can hardly access the requested data, has been expressed at all levels of government, horizontally and vertically.

TI BiH presented on this occasion the findings of the Research on the implementation of the Law on Free Access to Information in public enterprises. The main findings are given below:

– The research encompassed 371 public enterprises in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 190 of them located in the Republic of Srpska and 181 in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina
– All public enterprises had to submit the following information: copy of all contracts on public procurements of works, goods and services, including the accompanying annexes to all contracts concluded on the basis of any of the procedures provided by the Law in 2015; copy of the Job Classification Internal Regulation; list of all employees regardless of the type and duration of the contractual relationship.
– In the legally stipulated deadline, 39,4% of public enterprises responded in the Republic of Srpska, while in the Federation of BiH that percentage was 27,6%. U
– In 36,6% of cases the procedure took more than a month, although the legally prescribed deadline is 15 days.
– So far, 39 lawsuits have been filed for violating the Law on Free Access to Information against the public enterprises which are refusing to deliver the requested information.