{"id":6196,"date":"2011-07-15T10:25:15","date_gmt":"2011-07-15T14:25:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freedominfo.org\/?p=6196"},"modified":"2011-08-08T12:41:09","modified_gmt":"2011-08-08T16:41:09","slug":"bulgarian-aip-offers-proposals-in-annual-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freedominfo.org\/2011\/07\/bulgarian-aip-offers-proposals-in-annual-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Bulgarian AIP Offers Proposals in Annual Report"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Access to Information Programme (AIP) in Bulgaria has identified persistent problems facing those seeking government information and made a series of recommendations.<\/p>\n<p>The eleventh annual report containing the information &#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aip-bg.org\/l_reports.htm\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Access to Information in Bulgaria 2010<\/em><\/a> \u00a0&#8212; is now available in English online.<\/p>\n<p>AIP identifies several persisting problems:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Lack of unified practices in terms of active provision of access to information;<\/li>\n<li>Lack of an oversight and coordination body in terms of access to information provision;<\/li>\n<li>Unclear responsibilities regarding the control and the imposition of sanctions for unfulfilled obligations, including online publication of information;<\/li>\n<li>Lack of official policy for permanent trainings of officials responsible under the Access to Public Information Act;<\/li>\n<li>Lack of awareness about the accumulated litigation experience in institutional practices of information provision; <\/li>\n<li>The declared policy of transparency is not bound to budget transparency and more precisely to the transparency of public bodies\u2019 contracts. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In 2010, the<strong> <\/strong>Bulgarian government did not undertake any measures to start the procedure of signing and ratification of the Council of Europe Convention on Access to Official Documents, the group also noted.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Recommendations Made<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong>The report includes a series of recommendations:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>To authorize a specific public body to supervise and coordinate the APIA implementation activities, including the online publication of information;<\/li>\n<li>To change the officials responsible for finding and sanctioning non-compliance with the APIA so that they shall not coincide with the officials subject to sanctioning;<\/li>\n<li>To extend the scope of administrative sanctions under the APIA so that they would also cover not responding in the legally prescribed form; <\/li>\n<li>The inspectorates shall undertake their functions regarding inspections and control over the APIA implementation;<\/li>\n<li>To start imposing sanctions for officials non-complying with the provisions of the Access to Public Information Act;<\/li>\n<li>The implementation of the obligations for active disclosure of information online to be set as priority;<\/li>\n<li>Unification of the Internal APIA Implementation Rules; <\/li>\n<li>Transparency of the contracts of the authorities;<\/li>\n<li>Review and amendment to the Minister of Finance Order No. 10 of the of 2001 for determining the fees for the provision of information;<\/li>\n<li>Assisting information requestors to become an attitude of the APIA responsible officials. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The report also covers legislative initiatives, the results of AIP audit on institutional web sites, and information on litigation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Access to Information Programme (AIP) in Bulgaria has identified persistent problems facing those seeking government information and made a series of recommendations. The eleventh annual report containing the information &#8212; Access to Information in Bulgaria 2010 \u00a0&#8212; is now available in English online. AIP identifies several persisting problems: Lack of unified practices in terms [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[494],"tags":[752],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4E8o3-1BW","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedominfo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6196"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedominfo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedominfo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedominfo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedominfo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6196"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedominfo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6199,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedominfo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6196\/revisions\/6199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedominfo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedominfo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedominfo.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}