Commitment to Publish Online Central and Local Government Legislation in Open Systems and for Free (AL0050)

Infocip considers that access to the central and local legislation is a public service that does not need improvement, despite more explicit legal requirements. The commitment to publish online in open systems free national and local legislation includes: - Regarding the central legislation, the government is committed to the publication of legislation in the official websites of the line Ministries, free of charge, in the section: Legislation. - Regarding local government legislation, Infocip offers vendime.al as online national platform, unique in its kind, which may be adopted as a reporting mechanism. Status quo or problem addressed by the commitment INFOCIP considers that access to the central and local government legislation is a public service, which is provided, for free in a bad quality and for many years, despite explicit legal requirements. INFOCIP proposed GoA to commit in publishing online in open systems and for free this kind of legislation. For central government legislation, a coherent system should be adopted (the oldest is lacking efficiencies and consistency). For local government, INFOCIP offers vendime.al as a national platform, unique in its kind, which is adopted, it is reported directly as a significant contribution of civil society within the new commitment, but also the reporting mechanism. Main Objective This commitment’s main objective is to publish online in open systems and for free, central and local government legislation.

7. Publish government legislation online

Commitment Text:

Title: Publish online central and local government legislation in open systems and for free

Infocip considers that access to the central and local legislation is a public service that does not need improvement, despite more explicit legal requirements.

The commitment to publish online in open systems free national and local legislation includes:

- Regarding the central legislation, the government is committed to the publication of legislation in the official websites of the line Ministries, free of charge, in the section: Legislation.

- Regarding local government legislation, Infocip offers vendime.al as online national platform, unique in its kind, which may be adopted as a reporting mechanism.

Responsible institution: Minister of state for Local Issues (MSLI)

Supporting institution: InfoCip

Start date: 2016 End date: 2018

Editorial note: For full commitment text, please refer to https://www.opengovpartnership.org/sites/default/files/Albania_NAP3_ENG.pdf.

Context and Objectives

INFOCIP, a civil society organization based in Tirana, considers access to central and local government legislation a public service. While access to legislation is provided and is legally required, local government legislation is not publicly available in all 61 municipalities in Albania. A 2016 MJAFT! Movement monitoring report suggests that nearly 58 percent of central and local government institutions failed to respond to freedom of information requests submitted by the organization. For local government legislation, challenges are even more pressing given the fact that many municipalities, especially small and medium-sized municipalities, do not have official websites.^{[Note86: 'Challenges of local government units in the fight against corruption', IDM assessment report 2016, http://idmalbania.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/LGU-Anticorruption-English.pdf ]}

The current system of providing government legislation is also fragmented and inefficient. According to the legislation in force, national legislation and bylaws adopted by the Government should be published in the Official Gazette. These acts are also published electronically on the portal http://www.qbz.gov.al. On the other hand, Article 18 point 3 of the Law 'On the local self-government in Albania' stipulates that legal acts adopted by municipal councils are published on websites or in other spaces accessible to the public, as well as through other means. But because many local governments do not have official websites, the practice of publishing local legislation is fragmented.

While developing the 2016-2018 action plan, INFOCIP proposed that the Government of Albania commit to publishing central and local government legislation online in open data for free, or open systems as referred to by the action plan. This commitment consists of two steps. First, for the central government, the commitment specifies that bylaws and other legal acts adopted by institutions will be published online in the websites of each ministry, under a separate heading (legislation). Second, for the local government, the commitment offers the portal vendime.al as a possible reporting mechanism. Vendime.al is an initiative of INFOCIP supported by various donors (e.g. US embassy in Tirana, National Endowment for Democracy, the European Union-funded project CIVILISC).

If fully implemented, this commitment will have moderate potential impact. For local government legislation, the vendime.al portal, combined with the websites of municipalities, fully address the need for online public access to municipal councils’ decisions. However, for central government legislation the commitment does not capture all central government agencies. The commitment is also vague in determining what type of legislation—laws, bylaws, decisions, regulations, orders, etc.— should be made publicly available. Additionally, the commitment text only refers to publication of central government legislation on Ministry websites, and not in the Official Gazette. It is unclear where ministries are committed to publishing their legislation.

This commitment addresses the OGP value of access to information. The commitment activities focus on adopting legislation, which will enable an increased amount of information and improved quality of information. However, because this commitment does not provide a mechanism for public consultation on central or local government legislation, it is not relevant to civic participation or public accountability.

Completion

It is important to note that the Minister of State for Local Issues (MSLI), the leading institution, was not aware of its responsibilities regarding this commitment. INFOCIP, the listed supporting institution, acted as the lead implementing organization. In addition, MSLI was unaware that they had committed to publish central legislation on the official websites of the line ministries and the Official Gazette. This misunderstanding made it difficult to gauge completion, but the poor coordination among institutions does not have a direct consequence on specificity coding.

The MSLI has not offered information on the progress of this commitment, and completion has been coded as not started for the first commitment activity. The progress of this commitment’s implementation is uneven for central and local government legislation. Even before this commitment was undertaken, most government ministries’ websites had a section titled 'legislation,' containing information about the basic legal and sub-legal acts regulating the sectors of their authority. Yet, not all ministries’ websites contained this information. Other ministries included partial information (e.g. laws but not updated information about adopted bylaws such as ministers’ orders, decisions or regulations).^{[Note87: The website of the Ministry of foreign affairs did not have a separate section about 'legislation'; the Ministry of Education and sport included 'legislation' heading about sports, date accessed June 2017.]}

With regards to the local government legislation, a 2017 monitoring report by INFOCIP suggests that 41 out of the 61 local government units in Albania (nearly 67 percent) have published the decisions of municipal councils, compared to 12 LGUs (20 percent) in 2016. 17 municipalities publish local government legislation on both their website and vendime.al. Another 15 publish local legislation only at vendime.al. Seven municipalities infrequently publish online local legislation, while two municipalities only publish online the title of the decisions of municipal councils.

INFOCIP has reported that vendime.al has expanded the number of municipalities which publish their decisions in this portal. Furthermore, INFOCIP has also reported that the portal had approximately 2,500 to 3,000 unique visitors per month in the first half of 2017, and an overall average of 200,000 clicks per month.^{[Note88: Interview, reports and access to files provided by INFOCIP during July – September 2017.]}

Early Results

No information about the use of the 'legislation' section in line ministries’ websites has been offered to the IRM researcher. However, INFOCIP has provided useful and reliable data on the use of the vendime.al portal.

CSOs and local government experts are aware of and are using the vendime.al portal. However, no citizen participating in the focus groups conducted by the IRM researcher was aware of the commitment or the vendime.al portal.

Next Steps

While Albania is still on time to publish central government legislation by June 2018, realistically, there is not enough time for all 61 municipalities to publish local government legislation with all the legal acts in force.^{[Note89: The STAR 2 Project (Support to the Territorial and Administrative Reform) can be used in this regard. Between 2017 and March 2019 the STAR 2 project will support the online legislation (from 2015 onwards) for 31 municipalities which do not publish online legal acts in cooperation with the Commissioner on the Right to Information and Protection of Personal Data. Information obtained from STAR 2 officials (September 2017).]} The IRM researcher recommends following up this commitment in the next action plan. In addition to this, the commitment also needs to be redesigned to include clearer definitions of actions and the institution(s) responsible for its implementation. Specifically, with the new government taking office in September 2017, the following steps need to be taken into account:

· Take measures to unify all ministries’ websites with a separate 'legislation' section. Additionally, the same should apply for other state agencies at the central government level.

· Have the responsible institution identify the type of legal acts to be published. At present, it remains unclear which government institutions is in charge of this commitments as the MSLI does not exist in the new government cabinet.

· Remind municipalities to coordinate with vendime.al and make use of the already rich resource of local government legislation. INFOCIP is taking action to coordinate with the government and donors (UNDP Albania) supporting the territorial and administrative reform’s implementation.

· Include mechanisms for public consultation when drafting bylaws.

· Take actions to make the commitment more relevant for interest groups (e.g. businesses, CSOs, media) through greater clarity on the type of bylaws to be published under the ministries’ websites; and

· Coordinate with donors supporting the publication of local legislation, an element of territorial and administrative reform (in force since 2015) and take into account the need for more targeted use of vendime.al.

7. Publish government legislation online

Commitment Text:

Title: Publish online central and local government legislation in open systems and for free

Infocip considers that access to the central and local legislation is a public service that does not need improvement, despite more explicit legal requirements.

The commitment to publish online in open systems free national and local legislation includes:

• Regarding the central legislation, the government is committed to the publication of legislation in the official websites of the line Ministries, free of charge, in the section: Legislation.
• Regarding local government legislation, Infocip offers vendime.al as online national platform, unique in its kind, which may be adopted as a reporting mechanism.

Responsible institution: Minister of State for Local Issues (MSLI)

Supporting institution(s): InfoCip

Start date: 2016 End date: 2018

Editorial note: For full commitment text, please refer to https://www.opengovpartnership.org/sites/default/files/Albania_NAP3_ENG.pdf.

Commitment Aim:

This commitment aimed to improve access to central and local government legislation. At the municipal level, while access to legislation was provided as legally required, local government legislation was often not publicly available in municipalities, in part because many local governments did not have official websites. In particular, municipalities in the main urban centers and developed areas of the country regularly published their acts on their website or through other means. However, medium-sized or small municipalities failed to do so. At the central level, the system of providing government legislation was also fragmented and inefficient, although national legislation and bylaws adopted by the government should be published in the Official Gazette and electronically on the portal http://www.qbz.gov.al.

On the suggestion of the CSO INFOCIP, the Government of Albania committed to publish central and local government legislation online, in open data format and for free. The commitment consisted of two steps. First, for the central government, bylaws and other legal acts adopted by institutions would be published on the websites of each ministry. Second, for local governments, the commitment offered the portal vendime.al as an online platform and as a possible reporting mechanism.

Status

Midterm: Limited

This commitment had limited progress at the midterm. The Minister of State for Local Issues (MSLI), the leading institution, was not aware of its responsibilities regarding this commitment. The Center for Public Information Issues (known as INFOCIP in Albanian) [41] listed as supporting institution, acted in fact as the lead implementing organization. In addition, MSLI was unaware that they had committed to publish central legislation on the official websites of the line ministries and the Official Gazette.

INFOCIP reported that vendime.al had expanded the number of municipalities which publish their decisions in this portal. The IRM midterm report 2016-2017 noted a modest number of users of vendime.al. [42]

End of term: Substantial

No progress was noted in 2018 regarding the first milestone of this commitment, the publication of central legislation on the official websites of the line ministries, free of charge. Government ministries’ websites have a section titled “legislation,” containing information about the basic legal and sub-legal acts regulating the sectors of their authority, however, not all of them are complete. Namely, there is a lack of updated information on adopted bylaws such as ministers’ orders, decisions, or regulations.

However, the second milestone, on publishing online all local governments’ acts in all municipalities across the country on vendime.al, was fully implemented. [43] INFOCIP reported that all 61 municipalities published online legislation adopted by the municipality. In 2016, the portal published acts from only 12 municipalities; in 2017 this number increased to 41 municipalities. During 2018, thanks to UNDP’s STAR project’s support, INFOCIP included all 61 municipalities. [44]

Did It Open Government?

Access to Information: Major

Although the government did not publish central legislation on the official websites, publishing online all local governments’ acts in all municipalities across the country on vendime.al represents a major achievement. Indeed, public access to municipal legislation had long been a problematic issue. Therefore, the portal offered an adequate response to such need and the preliminary results of the website’s usage are encouraging. CSOs, especially in smaller and underdeveloped municipalities, find the portal particularly useful for their work. [45]

Vendime.al hosts 20,662 municipal council decisions (MCDs), corresponding to 61 municipalities. Since the launch in 2013, there have been a total of 142,785 unique visitors. The number of unique visitors has increased from around 11,000 in 2013 to 81,000 in 2018. By November 2018, there were almost 10 million (9,884,833) hits in the unified platform to see/download MCDs and a total of 3,370,495 pages browsed by different users. These data have respectively increased from 60,000 hits and 241,000 pages in 2013 to nearly 4 million hits and 1.5 million pages in 2018. Also, INFOCIP representatives suggested that the number of beneficiaries of the information published was expected to continue increasing significantly. [46]

Carried Forward?

At the time of writing this report, Albania has not published a new action plan. The follow-up step to this commitment, as recommended by the IRM researcher, could be to unify all ministries’ websites with a separate “legislation” section. The same could apply for other state agencies at the central government level.

[41] INFOCIP, http://www.infocip.org/en/

[42] IRM Albania Progress Report 2016-2017, page 56.

[43] Gert Shella, Director of INFOCIP, interview by IRM researcher, 31 October 2018.

[44] Report on the implementation of the right to information by municipalities in Albania (September 2018), page 19, http://www.infocip.org/al/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Monitorimi-INFOCIP-2018-E-DREJTA-E-INFORMIMITNE-61BASHKI.pdf

[45] Testimonials (in Albanian) of civil society activists on the usefulness of the Vendime.al portal, https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2160148487377249&id=302120716513378&refid=52&__tn__=C-R

[46] Gert Shella, Director of INFOCIP, interview by IRM researcher, 31 October 2018.