Press Releases - Archive

The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection analyzed the information booklets of six government bodies under Article 22 paragraph 2 of the Law on Free Access to Public Information – the Government of the Republic of Serbia, the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia, the President of the Republic of Serbia, the Republican Public Prosecutor's Office, the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court of Cassation in November 2015.

The analysis suggests that the highest public authorities neglected the legal obligation of proactive disclosure of information about their work to an unexpected extent both in terms of presentation of updated information and in terms of making the Information Booklet with all relevant parts. Of the six bodies only the Supreme Court of Cassation created the Information Booklet the essential elements of which complied with the law i.e. the Instructions for Creating and Publishing Information Booklets.

Of the six state bodies whose Information Booklets were reviewed, five did not present data on the funds and allocations, three bodies did not presented data on salaries, four of them did not show complete information on public procurement and four of them did not report the details of the budget for the current year.

An unpleasant surprise came in the form of the Information Booklet of the National Assembly, which has repeatedly been awarded for its contribution to the affirmation of the right of access to information and transparency in its work and, inter alia, for very substantive and regularly updated information booklets. A part of the obligatory information on public procurement (public procurement plans for 2014 and 2015) was found to be missing, and it was found that data on the means of production have not been updated.

Letters were sent to all of these bodies, with the exception of the Supreme Court of Cassation, which pointed to the relevance, importance and necessity of proactive disclosure of information about the work of public authorities as means of improving transparency of public bodies.

Yesterday and today The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection addressed a number of media, journalists and citizens on the occasion of the presentation of information on the health status of citizen A.K. on TV PINK.

On that occasion, the Commissioner warned that even the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia (Article 42) itself prohibited and punished the use of personal data beyond the purpose for which they were collected, except for the purposes of criminal proceedings or the protection of national security. Therefore, only the competent authorities had the right and duty to deal with the processing of personal data collected by other parties for other purposes, but only for the purpose of combating crime and the protection of national security, and not out of it, especially not to the "purpose" of placing these data to the general public.

 A special annual award - "Award contribution to the advancement of the rights of victims" was given to the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection Rodoljub Sabić at the Annual Conference of the Victimology Society of Serbia held on the 26th and the 27th of November, 2015 with the participation of many representatives of science and practice from several countries around the world,

Thanking for this recognition, Commissioner Rodoljub Sabić reminded that 18 years ago he had been one of the founders of the Victimology Society of Serbia, that an official of the Society, that the seat of the Victimology Society had been at his lawyer's office for many years, but all that should be sufficient reason for the award of such a valuable recognition.

The Commissioner said that the reasons for the recognition should be sought in a number of actions and interventions that had been conducted in the area of ​​freedom of access to information and the protection of personal data which objectively represented a real contribution to a better status of the victims. In this regard, he stressed that regardless of the fact that he was personally very exposed in connection to all those actions, those actions and their effects were certainly not only his merit, but also the merit of a team that he had formed and led and whose human rights record he was very proud of. Therefore, he said, he saw the award as recognition of the work of his associates and expressed thanks on their behalf.

The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection believes that the currently available budget projections for 2016 relating to the provision of funds for functioning of the institution of the Commissioner express obvious intent to make operations of this institution significantly difficult and to make them impossible for quite some time.

This is undoubtedly and best evidenced by the fact that the planned fund for salaries of employees at the Commissioner's Office is almost by 30% lower than the fund which was available to the Commissioner in 2015.

It is not quite clear who is behind this, since the Commissioner's associates received information that "the limit has been determined by the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government" in their communication with the Ministry of Finance. But even if we leave aside the question whether either of these ministries has the right to radically worsen operating conditions of an independent institution without any consultations with the Commissioner, one thing is obvious – the planned funds are not sufficient even to cover salaries of the existing number of employees in the Commissioner's Office, which means that budget "makers" plan dismissals in the Office.