Proactive disclosure of public information was one of the most important commitments taken by Georgia within the framework of the Open Government Partnership (OGP). After active consultations, meetings and negotiations with civil society, as well as active support of the Institute for Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI) and other NGOs, the Government of Georgia adopted the Decree #219 on 26 August 2013 on the Electronic Request and Proactive Disclosure of Public Information. The decree entered into force on September 1, 2013 and obligated public institutions managed by the government to create public information websites and publish pieces of information listed in the annex until December 31, 2013.
In September 2014, one year following the introduction of the proactive publication standard, IDFI conducted a monitoring of the websites of public institutions with support from East-West Management Institute’s (EWMI) Advancing CSO Capacities and Engaging Society for Sustainability(ACCESS) project, funded by United States Agency for International Development (USAID). As of May 2019, IDFI has updated its monitoring results, which are presented below.
Key Findings
- In May 2019, IDFI conducted a detailed monitoring of proactive disclosure of public information on the websites of 100 public institution in Georgia. Out of 100 public institutions, 8 institutions did not have their own website at all, and 6 did not have public information section on the website. One agency did not have its own website, but its public information section was displayed on the website of its supervising institution. The remaining 85 public institutions had public information sections and proactively published information.
Among the agencies that did not have a website and/or public information section, all were LEPLs under the Ministries. Among these agencies were educational institutions, as well as newly founded structures, whose websites were not created and the public information section did exist for the monitoring period.
- In 2019, the average rate of compliance to proactive disclosure of public information is 53%, which is 18% less than in 2014.
- In 2019, no public institution demonstrated a 100% compliance with the legal requirements of proactive publication of information.
- Among the central government institutions the highest (98%) compliance was demonstrated by the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport, while the lowest (39%) by the Administration of the Government.
- Nine of the 13 central public institutions have worsened their proactive disclosure rate since 2014.
- The average compliance rate of Legal Entities of Public Law and sub-agencies is 47%, compared to the 76% average of their parent ministries.
- Approximately 40% of ministry subordinate institutions had less than 30% of proactive information published on their website.
- Information on spending proved to be the least proactively published category of public information.
- No public institution had published information in open data formats (CSV or XML). 31 public institutions had published specific financial information in Excel format.
- Only 48 public institutions offered access to archived information that was proactively published in previous years.
See the Rating of Proactive Disclosure of Public Information (Monitoring Results of 2019) here
/public/upload/IDFI_2019/General/proaqtiuli_ENG.pdf
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