Publishing the Public Interest Information on a Single Government Portal: Transparenta.Gov.Ro (RO0019)

Promoting government transparency is one of the main objectives of the OGP. This project will confirm to this objective by facilitating the public’s access to information of public interest on a single government gateway.
The information will be issued officially being uploaded by each institution.
In the first phase of the project, the institutions will upload on the gateway the information that is subject to compulsory disclosure according to Law no. 544/2001:
a) the normative deeds regulating the organization and operation of the public authority or institution;
b) the organizational structure, the attributions of the departments, the working hours, the audience hours of that public authority or institution;
c) the surnames and given names of the people from the management of that public authority and institution and of the officer in charge with the disclosure of the public information;
d) the contact information for that public authority and institution, meaning: denomination, office, phone and fax numbers, e-mail address and its website;
e) the financial sources, the budget and the balance sheet;
f) own programs and strategies;
g) the list including the public interest documents;
h) the list including the categories of documents prepared and/or administered according to the law;
i) the ways of objecting to the decision made by the public authority and institution in case the person considers itself to be prejudiced as far as the right of access to the requested public interest information is concerned;
j) yearly activity report.
Benchmarking will be used to measure the degree to which the different institutions publish their data and evaluate the transparency levels of these institutions.
In the following phases of the project, the published data will extend to include other types of information of public interest as well. These new types of information will be selected by consulting public institutions, analysing court decisions and through civil society and private sector consultations.

Commitment 1. Publishing the Public Interest Information on a Single Government Portal: transparenta.gov.ro

Commitment Text:

Publishing the public interest information on a single government portal: transparenta.gov.ro

1.     The procedures for the upload of public interest information on the gateway, including the open data, will be established (September 2014)

2.     Official launch of the portal, presenting to the public its intended purpose, functions and planned future steps for the increase of published information. (October 2014)

3.     Each ministry and subordinate agencies will publish the information that is subject to compulsory disclosure according to Law no. 544/2001 on the single gateway transparenta.gov.ro regular updates

4.     Updating the list comprising the public information that is subject to compulsory disclosure following consultations with public institutions, the civil society and private sector and analysis of court decisions. (September 2015)

5.     Amendment of Law no. 544/2001 to include the new list of public information that resulted following consultations and subsequent portal update. (June 2016)

Responsible institution: Chancellery of the Prime Minister

Supporting institution(s): Public institutions,^{[Note 1: The list of public institutions is included in the Annex of the national action plan (http://bit.ly/2g7kvde). The list includes 17 ministries (Foreign Affairs; Internal Affairs; Agriculture and Rural Development; National Defense; Culture; Regional Development and Public Administration; Economy; National Education; Public Finance; European Funds; Justice; Environment and Climate Change; Labor; Family, Social Protection, and Elderly; Health; Information Society; Youth and Sport; and Transportation) and the authorities, agencies, and central institutions subordinate to or under the coordination of ministries. ]} Open Data Coalition

Start date: September 2014                           End date: June 2016

Commitment Aim:

This commitment aims to create a centralized repository for public information. At the time the commitment was adopted, most public institutions were already publishing required information on their own websites. The institutions were adhering to Law 544/2001, which set standards for free access to public information.^{[Note 2: The text of the law is available on the Romanian legislation portal: http://legislatie.just.ro/Public/DetaliiDocument/31413. ]} However, public institutions did not adhere to a standardized format and therefore the information was not always easily accessible. For this reason, navigating government documents can be confusing and time consuming for users.^{[Note 3: Examples of offering access to public interest information: http://www.just.ro/transparenta-decizionala/, http://www.fonduri-ue.ro/transparenta/interes-public, http://www.mdrap.gov.ro/transparenta/prezentare-generala, http://edu.ro/transparenta-institutionala. ]}  Moreover, stakeholders had difficulty verifying and monitoring each institution’s compliance with the law.

Status

Midterm: Limited

At the midterm, progress on this commitment was limited as implementation had not progressed beyond the discussion phase. Most ministries had not yet introduced uploading procedures, nor made information on the process publicly available. Civil society organizations (CSOs) were in charge of updating the list of public interest information that the government must disclose, but little progress has been made. Among CSOs there is still uncertainty about how the Romanian courts have defined public interest documents. For more information, please see the 2014–2015 IRM midterm report.^{[Note 4: The report is available at http://bit.ly/2gUBpx5.]}

End of term: Limited

Based on the government’s self-assessment report and on interviews with the OGP team members from the Chancellery of the Prime Minister, there was no further progress on the implementation of any of the milestones included in this commitment. Although some discussions took place by the midterm, according to the government work on this commitment never officially began, and no activities have been carried out. The main reason for stalled progress is administrative: the commitment did not receive the resources it required. Funding and management shortages are a significant problem affecting the national action plan as a whole and are not particular to this commitment.

Furthermore, there are few trained personnel familiar with the commitment, which has resulted in a shortage of civil servants working exclusively on coordinating implementation. High rates of employee turnover also complicate implementation, requiring frequent retraining. The process additionally lacks a normative framework that would require ministries to upload and update public information on the portal. Since the milestones in this commitment are cumulative, the failure to establish procedures for uploading information has stalled the whole commitment. The ministries did not advance beyond preliminary talks, and the Open Data Coalition and other CSOs charged with monitoring the implementation of this commitment did not receive the information they needed to fulfill their role. As there has been no further progress since the midterm, this commitment remains limited in completion.  

Did it open government?

Access to information: Did not change

Civic participation: Did not change

This commitment focused on standardizing and improving the information available on a single government web portal. While government ministries generally comply with information disclosure requirements, this commitment did not lead to the introduction of a unified or standardized system for publishing information. Therefore, it did not improve information access or opportunities for civic participation.

Carried forward?

The commitment has been carried forward with some changes in the third national action plan. The Chancellery of the Prime Minister has taken over responsibility for this commitment, and the work plan has been updated to improve collaboration among ministries. The IRM researcher recommends prioritizing human resource training for implementing officials, as this was a primary cause for limited progress in the previous implementation period. In addition, the researcher recommends developing standards for uploading documents and interviewing civil society, academics, and other stakeholders to create a list of high-priority information.