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Public institutions fail to meet Public Information Act requirements

Tue, Mar 16 2010 15:07 CET

byPetar Kostadinov

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Public institutions fail to meet Public Information Act requirements

Photo: Anelia Nikolova

Just 28 per cent of Bulgaria's public institutions had sections where one could get access to public information, a survey by the NGO Access to Information Programme (AIP) said on March 16 2010.

The survey was presented at a news conference held at the Bulgarian news agency (BTA).

The survey's goal was to show how public institutions comply with the Access to Public Information Act which guarantees the publishing of public information on the internet.

AIP reviewed and assessed 499 websites of 511 Government administrative structures. The survey showed that just 18 per cent of the institutions provided e-mail addresses where people can get public information. Another 19.9 per cent have provided a telephone number for the same purpose.

Just 18.8 per cent had stipulated working hours for the section providing public information and only 18.6 per cent of the institutions provided a name of the employee responsible.

Just six per cent had published a report online on how they had complied with the law, AIP said.

"It is as if the 2008 amendments to the law did not mean anything to public institutions," AIP's head Gergana Zhouleva said.

The same survey also showed that only eight per cent of respondents thought that their rights under the Access to Public Information Act were being observed by institutions.

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