Is it easy to get information from government agencies?

Baku/17.02.22/Turan: A video on information transparency and information access  in state agencies  was held. The results of monitoring information resources important for the transparency of the activities of state bodies in 2021 were announced, and a report was presented with an assessment of the monitoring results.

The author of the report, Nasimi Mammadli, head of the Public Broadcasting Monitoring Center, tald about the state of obtaining information from state bodies in the program “Difficult Question”, presented by Kamran Mahmudov.

According to him, the Public Broadcasting Monitoring Center conducted a study "Measuring the information transparency of state structures", prepared on the basis of a 6-month monitoring.

“The study covered 154 websites belonging to 17 ministries, 7 state committees, 7 civil services, 30 agencies, 20 JSCs and CJSCs, 29 funds, departments, centers, LLCs, 18 companies, commissions, institutions and other structures. These are 17 ministries, 7 state committees, 7 civil services, 30 agencies, 20 OJSCs and CJSCs, 29 funds, departments of centers, LLC, 18 companies, commissions, institutions and other structures,” Mammadli said.

According to Mammadli, the conclusions of the study are disappointing. “The vast majority of websites of government agencies do not meet the criteria for financial transparency. State structures, as a rule, keep confidential data on the expenditure of budgetary funds, information about their current activities of the state structure. Often there is no information about the powers of divisions, about the tariff rate of heads of departments, their deputies and heads of structural divisions,” he said.

According to the expert, the problems with obtaining information about tenders, competitions, state programs and public procurements are getting worse.

“According to this indicator, there is a clear downward trend. Thus, compared to the past, information openness has decreased from 76% to 57%,” Mammadli says.

According to him, the situation is also unfavorable with the publication of the conditions for the participation of citizens in the discussion of current regulatory projects, the budget and its implementation, the use of extrabudgetary revenues,

According to the expert, permanent payments for the use of Asan imza (electronic signature form), the need to enter a pin code of an identity card, and the presence of a personal account in the portal negatively affect the receipt of electronic services. All this takes time from 5 minutes to an hour.

“Getting answers to information requests is a problem. In addition, on most sites platforms for sending requests are not sufficient, and on some they are not at all. Also, the search engines available on the sites for "tags" (keywords) are no good. Often, the information available in Google is missing on the site itself or hidden in subheadings,” Mammadli concluded.—0—