Not overly accessible
We demand the right to free access to informaton!
Commenting on the second anniversary of the adoption of the Public Information Act, Roman Kabachiy from the Institute of Mass Information writes that officials either don’t know their duties or know them enough to write formal fob-off responses.
In theory the law is good, he writes, and notes that in a world rating compiled by the Spanish NGO Access into Europe and Canadian Centre for Law and Democracy, Ukraine’s law was in eighth place. The reality, however, is quite different.
He points out the number of subjects which are effectively taboo these including:
the President’s highly controversial residence at Mezhyhirya;
the scandalous procurement of oil-rigs for Fuel Minister Yury Boiko;
MPs’ (strong!) reluctance to declare their income;
covert wiretapping of journalists:
In general, the authorities only publish information when forced to by public pressure. And they may not even publish apparently innocuous information. He notes that in Brovary because of the authorities’ failure to comply with the law civic activists were forced to create a parallel website with the documents that the city council was not publishing.