According to Article 49 of the General Administrative Code of Georgia, public institutions are obligated to submit a report on access to public information during the current year to the Parliament, President, and Prime Minister of Georgia, as well as publish it on the Legislative Herald. According to the legislation, the following information should be found in the report:

- Statistical information of the public information requests submitted to the public institution (including how many were accepted and how many were refused;

- Information on the appeal of the decision on the refusal to provide public information and related costs, including the amounts paid in favor of the party;   

- Information regarding the legislative act that serves as the basis for the refusal by the public institution to disclose the requested public information, as well as the identity of the public servant who made the decision to refuse; 

- On collecting and processing of public databases and personal data by the public institution; 

- About the number of violations of General Administrative Code requirements by civil servants and the imposition of fines on responsible persons.   

The results of the monitoring of the accuracy of December 10 Reports of public institutions conducted by IDFI in previous years showed frequent cases of data that did not correspond to the requirements of the legislation being included in the reports by public institutions. Additionally, in the absence of proper control mechanisms, the reports carried only a formal character, and a number of agencies did not shy away from dishonest and manipulative recording of the data reflected in them.

In 2021, a thematic study group was created within the Parliament of Georgia, which studied the effectiveness of parliamentary control over the presentation of access to information reports. Summary recommendations were submitted within the framework of the thematic study, envisioning, among other measures, legislative changes. Unfortunately, no substantive steps have been taken thus far in terms of implementing these recommendations.

It should be noted that the Public Administration Reform 2023-2026 Strategy highlights the importance of a unified standard for processing information on access to public information. Similarly, the 2023-2024 Action Plan had envisioned the development of a unified form for the access to information reports (so-called December 10 report) on the basis of the above-mentioned recommendations. According to the Action Plan, this activity was to be completed in the IV quarter of 2023, but to this date no such unified report form has been elaborated. 

Increasing the effectiveness of control over December 10 reports is especially important against the background of the worsening situation with regard to the availability of information in the country. According to ongoing IDFI monitoring, access to public information has declined sharply from 2022. For example, in 2022 the rate of responses from ministries to public information requests fell by 62%, while in LEPLs subordinated to the ministries it fell by 65%. 

For the present study, IDFI selected institutions of the executive government (in total 82 agencies) to which IDFI had submitted an administrative complaint in 2023 due to a lack of response to a public information request. 

Monitoring the accuracy of the December 10 reports was again complicated by the specifics of the inclusion of information in the reports.

Despite the difficulties in monitoring, with the logical control of IDFI's 2023 practices and the information reflected in the December 10 reports of public institutions, it was still possible to identify certain inconsistencies.

Main Findings

- Across 82 public institutions, 15 (including the Ministry of Culture, Sport and Youth) had not made the December 10 report in 2023 available at all;

- The statistical information reflected in December 10 reports of 24 public institutions contained inaccuracies and/or was recorded in a manipulative manner;   

- 3 public institutions that were more than six months overdue on at least one IDFI information request as of December 10, 2023, indicated in their December 10 reports that all public information requests had been fulfilled; 

- 21 public institutions that were more than six months overdue on at least one IDFI letter as of December 10, 2023, indicated that all public information requests had been satisfied or were ongoing in their reports; 

- 38 public institutions where IDFI had submitted a complaint in 2023 included no information on complaints or indicated that no complaints had been submitted in their reports;

- According to the statistical information presented in the December 10 reports, only 36 public institutions have made a decision to refuse to provide public information. Among them, information about the public servant responsible for the decision was reflected only in 5 cases;

- Only 4 public institutions included information about public databases in the reports;

- Currently, no substantive steps have been taken to implement the recommendations presented by the parliamentary thematic study group on increasing the effectiveness of parliamentary control over the submission of December 10 reports;    

- According to the Public Administration Reform 2023-2024 Action Plan, the development of a unified form for the submission of December 10 reports should have been completed in the IV quarter of 2023, but this has not been achieved.

Conclusion

The monitoring of the so-called December 10 reports of 82 agencies submitted in 2023 studied within the framework of the study showed that, like previous years, there are frequent cases when public institutions include data in their reports that do not comply with the requirements of the law.

For example, ignoring the administrative complaints sent by IDFI during the reporting period, despite leaving the requests for public information unanswered, reflecting the satisfaction of all requests in the reports of December 10, as well as the current statuses assigned to the months-overdue letters, indicate dishonest and manipulative accounting of information by public institutions. For example, indicating in the December 10 report that all public information requests had been fulfilled, ignoring the administrative complaints submitted by IDFI during the reporting period, or indicating that proceedings are ongoing for requests where a response had been months overdue, shows that public institutions resort to dishonest and manipulative recording of information. 

It should be noted that the discrepancies discussed in this report were identified only by logical comparison of the answers received to IDFI's requests and the data reflected in the December 10 reports. Therefore, we can assume that in case of a complete study of the reports, the scale of existing inaccuracies and inconsistencies would increase significantly.

The inaccuracies identified within the monitoring of the December 10 reports of 2023 echo the practices observed in previous years. Therefore, to ensure the credibility of the December 10 reports, it is important to implement the recommendations developed by IDFI in previous years, a significant part of which is included in the conclusion presented by the thematic group of the Parliament of Georgia.

IDFI once again calls on the government to take substantive steps towards implementing the recommendations presented by the parliamentary thematic study group and to ensure the timely implementation of the obligations envisioned in the Public Administration Reform Action Plan.