Practice of E-request of Public Information and Proactive Disclosure in Public Institutions

The August 26 decree of the government of Georgia #219 about the ‘E-request of Public Information and Proactive Disclosure” was enforced on September 1, 2013.

In the present research, conducted between January 21, 2014 and February 21, 2014, IDFI attempted to display how the institutions complied with the commitments. In this period IDFI studied the proactive disclosure of information on the web-pages of the State Chancellery, ministries and the offices of state ministers as well as the public information e-request practice on these websites.

It turned out that the State Chancellery and the ministries showed high rate of complying with the commitments.

However, it must be noted that the mentioned agencies mostly provide the information that meets the minimum requirements of the government decree. The research presents the recommendations of publishing the information, elaborated by IDFI in order to provide the financial transparency of the administrative bodies and accessibility of the public information.

The recommendations cover the following issues:

• The structure of the administrative agency and the description of its functions

IDFI recommendation (structure and description of functions of each department)

• General statistics about the statements in accordance to the 37^th and 40^th articles of the general administrative code

IDFI Recommendation (providing the registry of the letters of request of public information with the date, addressee, content and the status of the requested information)

• Information about the transfer of state property

IDFI recommendation (list of transferred property, the conditions of transfer and who received it)

• Advertisement costs

IDFI recommendation (where and what kind of advertisement was placed)

• Information about the salaries, allowances and bonuses

IDFI recommendation (providing the mentioned information separately for each official)

• Information about the official and business trip expenses

IDFI recommendation (providing the information about the business trip expenses separately about each official, together with trip date, purpose of the trip and the country)

• List of vehicles, naming models.

IDFI recommendation (date of purchase, year of production, current value)

• Fuel consumption expenses

IDFI recommendation (expenses of the high officials and other employees separately)

• Vehicle technical service costs

IDFI recommendation (expenses of the high officials and other employees separately)

• List of real estates in the property of the institution

IDFI recommendation (specifying under balance)

• Communication costs

IDFI recommendation (expenses of the high officials and other employees separately).