Publish Implementation Plans for Regulations (SK0126)

The USSR ROS commissioned a representative public survey on the trust and involvement of citizens in theGovernance - Representative survey of participation in the Slovak Republic. The survey was conducted by the AgencyFocus in November - December 2018 on a sample of more than 1,200 citizens. byThe survey shows that only 33% of citizens agree that their government provides factual and sufficient information ontheir decisions. Moreover, the public least trusts the Slovak Government, the Slovak Parliament and the politicalparties. The Eurobarometer survey of August 2019 examined similar resultspublic opinion in June 2019. National institutions of the Slovak Republic, such as the National Council of the Slovak Republic, the Government of the Slovak Republic and the police, enjoycompared to other Member States, the low confidence of their citizens. One of the tools to increase citizens' trust in the institutions that manage the country is to make it possiblepublic and civil society to learn about the activities of individual institutions. In the context of OGPthese are mainly ministries and other CSOs whose activities also depend on the fulfillment of tasks,adopted through resolutions of the Government of the Slovak Republic.On the central public administration portal, slovakia.sk provides the Open Government Portal (https://rokovania.gov.sk/) comprehensive information on the negotiations of the Government of the Slovak Republic - legislative proposalsor non-legislative materials submitted to the Government meeting and the results of the Government meetingAdopted in the form of resolutions of the Government of the SR. What is missing is information on the implementation of the resolution. WithinThe Open Government Portal needs to be set up to allow individual ministriesand other ÚOŠS regularly publish the fulfillment of tasks arising from resolutions of the Government of the Slovak Republic in a unifiedand structured form. Publication of the fulfillment of tasks arising from the resolutions of the Government of the Slovak Republic issubject to system set-up, tasks will be published from the system uptime.Fulfilling the task is one of the steps to increase transparency and accountability of public administration,in accordance with the will of the Government of the Slovak Republic declared in several strategic documents and initiatives:
• In its policy statement, the Government of the Slovak Republic subscribed to the Initiative for Open Governance.One of the main principles is to increase transparency by improving public accessand civil society for information. Moreover, this role partly reflects the recommendationfocus on increasing the transparency of the Independent Evaluation MechanismInitiatives for Open Governance, which prepared the Slovak Republic 's Report on the Preparation andcreating an action plan for 2017-2019.
• In its policy statement, the Government of the Slovak Republic also subscribed to the Rule of Law Initiative,whose main principles include increasing transparency.
• Transparency, effective control and support for civil society towards participationon the control of public policies is one of the challenges that the Slovak Republic wants to focus on within the national frameworkthe priorities arising from the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (hereinafter "the 2030 Agenda").
The strengthening of transparency is also reflected in the forthcoming Vision and Strategy of Slovakia 's Development byof the year 2030 in the theme of the Integrated Development Program IV: Multilevel Governance closer tocitizens.
Specific milestones towards the goal:
1. Set up a system enabling the publication of the fulfillment of tasks resulting from the resolutions of the Government of the Slovak Republicin a unified and structured form
Deadline: 31 December 2020
Responsible: Head of the Office of the Government of the Slovak Republic
2. Based on the set system, regularly in cooperation with ministries and otherscentral government bodies to publish the fulfillment of tasks from the Government Resolution by datetheir fulfillment
Deadline: continuously
Responsible: Head of the Office of the Government of the Slovak Republic

1. Publish when ministries complete actions from government resolutions

Main Objective

“On a regular basis, publish completion of tasks of individual Ministries and other Central Authorities of the State Administration resulting from the Government Resolutions.” [1]

Milestones

1. Prepare the system for the publication of completion of tasks resulting from the Government Resolutions in a uniform and structured manner.
2. Following the system setup, and in cooperation with Ministries and other Central Authorities of the State Administration, regularly publish completion of tasks resulting from the Government Resolutions according to their deadline.

Editorial Note: For the complete text of this commitment, please see Slovakia’s action plan at https://www.opengovpartnership.org/documents/slovakia-action-plan-2019-2021/.

Commitment Analysis

This commitment features in the Slovak action plan for the first time. It aims to address the low levels of trust in the government. A recent Standard Eurobarometer survey from 2019, [2] showed that only 29 percent of Slovaks trust in their national government (below the EU28 average of 34 percent). The commitment will modify the Open Government Portal to enable ministries and other central government bodies to publish, on an ongoing basis, how they implement and complete tasks resulting from government resolutions.

This commitment would address the OGP value of access to information, as it creates an opportunity for the public to understand the context in which and reasons why some actions are taken or not taken.

At the moment, the central Open Government Portal includes a section where the public can find information on all government meetings, [3] what was discussed [4] and what resolutions [5] were approved. However, the portal does not enable publishing of the reports on implementation and completion of tasks. A civil representative interviewed for this report [6] stated that in most cases these can only be accessed through freedom of information requests, and, thus, obtaining them might take from several days to several weeks.

The representatives of the Office of the Plenipotentiary [7] stated that while public bodies are obliged to prepare the reports summarizing how they met the assigned tasks, they are not obliged to publish them on the Open Government Portal. The ministries and other central government bodies report on the completion of their tasks to the Government Office using a different (closed) information system. [8] Representatives of the Office of the Plenipotentiary [9] stated to the IRM researcher that a technical solution is available, and the portal already includes a section [10] where the reports on completion of tasks could be published. At the moment, the reports are not publicly available by default. There are very few agencies, such as the Office of the Plenipotentiary, that publish them proactively or inform of the implementation and completion of the tasks on their websites.

Implementation of this commitment could have a minor impact as new information on the completion of tasks will be proactively available to the public and in a uniform and structured manner. While a technical solution needs to be up and running, the commitment requires public authorities to ensure this becomes an integral part of their reporting process, and not an added extra. A civil society representative interviewed for this report [11] argued that the potential impact will also depend on the level of detail of published reports. In her view, the provided evidence needs to be easy to verify.      

1. Publish when ministries complete actions from government resolutions

Complete

The government completed implementation of the commitment to publish, on an ongoing basis, how government departments implement and complete tasks resulting from government resolutions. The reports are now published on the Open Government Portal [1] on a quarterly basis. So far, the reports have been published for the last quarter of 2019, 2020, and the first quarter of 2021. The reports appear comprehensive and contain a summary statistic of tasks fulfilled on time, fulfilled with a delay, unfulfilled, or cancelled, [2] but their format is not very user-friendly. The reports include appendices where all unfulfilled tasks are detailed, including an explanation of why the government department was unable to complete the task on time. The latest report from the first quarter of 2021 mentions the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as a reason for not fulfilling tasks. However, there is no easy way to check the completeness and reliability of provided information. [3]

A CSO representative welcomed the fulfilment of this commitment as an improvement [4] as previously, the reports could only be accessed through freedom of information requests. [5] However, a representative of the Office of the Plenipotentiary argued that how the reports were technically implemented and their format could be substantially improved. [6] The IRM researcher has found that currently, the reports are available in PDF format, which limits how this information can be analysed and compared. In addition, no information is available on who engages with these reports and how. The National Agency for Network and Electronic Services (NASES) and the Government Office [7] did not answer a request for the statistics on page visits for these sections of the Open Government Portal.