(Podgorica, 29 December 2011) – As part of the “You Have the Right to Know!” campaign – funded by the European Union through the EU Delegation in Montenegro and with MANS as the implementing partner – MANS is involved in assessing the capacities of both national and local institutions in implementing the Law on Free Access to Information. The project aims to objectively evaluate the capacities and thus the very willingness of institutions to implement the law by providing basic information concerning their responsibilities, budgets, human and administrative capacities, as well as other aspects of their work. The project aims to highlight the failures of institutions in applying the law and to encourage the elimination of such obstacles by pointing to institutions whose good practice in this field can serve as positive examples to others.
The “You Have the Right to Know!” campaign consists of three phases, each of which includes the monitoring of capacities of the most important national and local institutions to implement the law. The first phase of the project assessed the performance of 33 institutions, including 10 national institutions and 23 local ones from four Montenegrin municipalities.
The relevant institutions received 50 requests for information. All the steps taken by these institutions in response to these requests were measured, including the time that was needed for them to respond, and whether access to information was obtained in the first instance or only after a complaint was filed with the Administrative Court. On the basis of the nature of the institutional response, the length of the procedures, and other factors, a ranking was created of those institutions with the greatest and lowest capacities for implementing the Law on Free Access to Information.
National institutions that in the first phase of the project demonstrated that they had the greatest capacity to implement the law included: Montenegro’s Parliament; the Judicial Council; and, the Ministry of Finance. On the other hand institutions with the lowest demonstrated capacity to implement the law were: the Ministry of Sustainable Development and Tourism; the Ministry of Defense; and, the Ministry of Economy.
As for the institutions of local government, during the first phase of the project, the following institutions distinguished themselves for their capacity in implementing the law: the Secretariat for Spatial Planning and Development of the Capital-Podgorica; the Chief Administrator of the Municipality of Budva; and Podgorica’s Municipal Police. The local institutions with the lowest recorded capacities for implementing the law were: the Secretariat of Finance and Economic Development in Herzeg Novi; the Office of the President of the Municipality of Herceg Novi; and, the Secretariat for the Economy and Finance in Bar.
Research to date reveals that the majority of institutions continue to have difficulty accepting the principle that free access to information is an essential component of creating a democratic and free society. The competent authorities tend to look at the requests sent to them as excessive interference in their work, instead of seeing them as a need of socially engaged citizens for information on government agencies financed from the state budget. This is supported by the fact that many institutions still require court-orders to comply with standard requests for information. The behavior of these institutions – in addition to unnecessarily complicating administrative procedures and increasing the costs of treatment – greatly discourages people from using the Law on Free Access to Information.
The first full report on the capacity of institutions to enforce this law is now available on the MANS website.
