Fulfillment of obligations prescribed by the Law on Free Access to Information, inadequate staff structure and insufficient awareness of the members of the Council on the cases in which they are deciding are among key challenges faced by the Agency for Personal Data Protection and Free Access to Information (APDP).
The analysis of APDP’s capacities conducted by MANS, in addition to mapped issues, contains key recommendations in order to improve the situation to a certain extent, taking into account the Agency’s importance in the process of free access to information.
Although the institutional basis of the Agency can be considered sufficiently developed, a number of issues that arise in practice reflect other grounds on which the Agency is based which are problematically set, as well as non-compliance with established rules.
The analysis also showed that the structure of the employees in the Agency does not correspond to the organizational structure, primarily regarding the number of employees, while their competencies and degree to which they fulfill their obligations cannot be assessed because there is no established system of evaluation, and the Agency is not willing to provide any data on employees’ CVs to the public.
The system of job distribution in terms of performing the supervisory role and adopting decisions on appeals, as the most important and most loaded activities of the Agency, has not been specified in practice.
The issue of insufficiently defined manner in which cases come to the agenda at the sessions of the Council of the Agency is evident, and it was established that the members of the Council, who decide on the cases, are neither sufficiently informed about the cases nor are familiar with their content. The fact that they only decide, but do not compose decisions or have the obligation to check their final content, has to a great extent “poured“ authorities regarding Council’s decisions into the Information System Section, which independently interprets Council’s decisions and composes decisions.
On the other hand, decisions are inadequately reasoned, with poor legal conclusions and full of unnecessary descriptions of the case, which later reflects the work of other bodies in the system, such as the Administrative Court.
The analysis showed that the financial aspect is not a great challenge and that the existing budget mainly enables the work of the Agency, but additional funds would be necessary to improve the knowledge and skills of employees, for their education and training.
When it comes to the Agency’s information system and software solution, the analysis identified issues, primarily in terms of timely and consistent information gathering. This results in questionable accuracy of the available data, because it shows, for example, that MANS alone submitted more requests to the authorities in a certain period than the Agency recorded in the same period.
Also, a significant issue is the fact that electronic database, which monitors the procedure on appeals against decisions of the first instance authorities, as well as complaints against the decisions of the Agency, is not kept on a daily basis. It is therefore not possible to consistently monitor the “status” of a particular case. The Agency does not have an archive in electronic form, documentation is also not scanned, and thus it is impossible to store and search documents in the electronic form.
Based on the key findings of the analysis, MANS recommends for the Agency to act more in accordance with the normative framework set, or to carry out certain audit of the existing bylaws regulating its mode of operation, to be more transparent in terms of employment and capacity of employees, to redefine the division of competences between bodies and individual employees and to improve procedures in terms of making better decisions based on decisions of the Council of the Agency.
It is necessary for the Agency to more efficiently organize and clearly define the chronology of decision making in order not to violate the legal deadlines, to update its database daily and improve the existing software and create an electronic archive.
MANS
