In the past year, MANS analyzed the readiness of institutions to publish basic information about their work, in accordance with the Law on Free Access to Information, which obliges them to proactively publish certain categories of data on their websites. The analysis covered the websites of 139 authorities, including the Parliament of Montenegro, ministries in the Government of Montenegro, state administration bodies, the Capital City, local governments and public companies.
Most institutions violate the Law and do not publish the prescribed information, which limits the public control of their work. For this reason, representatives of the civil sector and the media are compelled to submit frequent requests for information in order to obtain data that, according to the law, should be published on the institutions’ websites.
Only 6% of authorities can be considered highly proactive, while one third has a medium level of proactivity.
On the other hand, 45% of authorities very poorly comply with the law and are considered to have low proactivity in informing citizens, while as much as 14% of analyzed bodies completely violate Article 12 of the Law on FAI.
GRAPH 1. LEVEL OF PROACTIVE PUBLISHING OF INFORMATION BY ALL AUTHORITIES (in percentage of published data in relation to the ones prescribed by the Law, by number of analyzed institutions)
Complete violation 14, High 6, Medium 35, Low 45
Only the Parliament of Montenegro fully complies with legal obligations, and all other institutions that were the subject of this analysis violate the Law to a certain extent.
GRAPH 2. LEVEL OF PROACTIVE PUBLISHING OF INFORMATION BY TYPES OF AUTHORITIES (in percentage of published data in relation to the ones prescribed by the Law, for all authorities of this type)
Parliament, Ministries, State administration bodies, Capital City, Local governments, Public companies
High, Medium, Low, Complete violation
Ministries mostly publish general information about their work, and least data contained in single acts, which directly point to the work of institutions and are extremely important for detecting corruption. Bodies within the Government are significantly more closed than the ministries, and most of them do not have half of the information prescribed by the Law on their websites.
Bodies within the Capital City do not publish proactively majority of the information prescribed by the law, half o them do not even have the Access to Information Guide published, and none contains any type of public records or registry. No local self-government fully publishes even basic information in the manner prescribed by the Law, and more than half of the units do not have the Guide published.
Public companies violate the law to a large extent and publish only general information on their websites. For example, no state-owned company has published data on the income of public officials in their own management structures.
Complete analysis is available at
http://www.mans.co.me/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/analiza_proaktivno.pdf
