Proactive transparency for open institutions
Skopje, 23 September 2022 (MIA) – Judiciary, agriculture, healthcare and public finance are part of the twenty areas of activity that will receive guidelines for improving the transparency of institutions in the public sector, as part of draft-guidelines prepared by the Center for Change Management in cooperation with North Macedonia’s Government.
Ahead of Friday’s presentation of the draft-guidelines, Deputy PM for good governance policies Slavica Grkovska said the goal is to establish what is the most requested information in the past three years, in order for the Government to instruct institutions to publish such information without prior request from the citizens.
“On the one hand, this will simplify the access of citizens to such information, it will increase the transparency and accountability of the institutions, and on the other hand, it will facilitate the work of the administration in order to respond at any time to the same requests they receive from the citizens,” said Grkovska.
Grkovska added this was in the direction of preparing a new law, in order to reach a level where every information and every document is publicly available, except for those that are classified information and those that threaten citizens’ personal data.
Center for Change Management Executive Director Neda Maleska Sachmaroska noted that there are about twenty areas that will receive guidelines for proactive transparency.
“There are about twenty areas, including agriculture, education, healthcare, etc., in terms of which we call on the institutions to proactively open data that can serve for statistical purposes, for research purposes, and serve as a better report to the citizens about how work is carried out, and thus also provide better evidence-based policies,” said Maleska Sachmaroska.
She added that on the part of civil society organizations, the media and citizens in general, the most demands in terms of data and information are as to the way in which institutions spend public money, noting as an example such demands in terms of funds allocation during the COVID pandemic, as well as information as to the way in which institutions are managed. Maleska Sachmaroska pointed out that with the current energy crisis situation, demands for such information are again on the rise.
Head of the Agency for Protection of the Right to Free Access to Public Information, Plamenka Bojchevska, said the Agency focuses on proactive transparency, i.e. on the publication of the information available and created by the institutions.
“This will have a big impact, as instead of submitting requests for access to information, the information will already be published on the websites and will be available for use.”
The conclusion of the opening addresses at today's presentation was that proactive publication of information in line with the draft-guidelines will enable improvement of the system for free access to public information, facilitate the work of the administration and enable greater citizens’ trust in the institutions.
The draft-guidelines were developed within the project "Encouraging good governance and reforms in public administration", implemented by the Center for Change Management, and supported by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
