State institutions’ webpages lack obligatory information, monitoring

An amount of obligatory information is lacking or is presented scarcely on the webpages of state institutions. Although the situation improved since last year, there are many doubts about the quality of webpages. These are the conclusions of the monitoring done by Transparency International Moldova (TI-Moldova) and by the Center of Analysis and Fight against Corruption (CAPC), Info-Prim Neo reports. TI-Moldova expert Ianina Spinei declared on Tuesday, September 18, at a press conference that 20 webpages of the central public authorities had been analyzed, verifying the presence of obligatory indicators stipulated by law, the updating of information and the publication source. The analysis revealed that the most complete obligatory information was provided by the webpages of the Principal State Fiscal Inspectorate (IFPS), of the Ministry of Justice and of the Ministry of Health. On the opposite side are the Cadaster and Land Relations Agency and the Ministry of Regional Development and Constructions. The majority of public authorities didn’t publish information about the results of inspections and audits done in the institution. Nearly half of all state institutions didn’t publish model requests and other documents accepted for examination and guidelines for filling them in. A third of the monitored institutions didn’t publish info about the functions and goals of subdivisions. As regards income and property declarations of the officials, webpages usually only display the ministers’ declarations. Five public authorities also published the deputy ministers’ declarations. Three institutions (MAI, ARFC and IFPS) didn’t post the income and property declarations, while the Minister of Economy’s declaration cannot be accessed. Galina Bostan, CAPC director, finds alarming the fact that state institutions don’t update the information about their activity. Experts recommend that these should pages should be filled in with information and to be easy viewable. Authorities must continuously update information and indicate the publishing date and the responsible subdivision. Lilia Carasciuc, head of TI-Moldova, declared that after a similar monitoring last year, a series of proposals was submitted to the Government and results appeared after half a year, as some necessary laws were adopted. The experts hope that the results of this year’s monitoring will be taken into consideration as well. The webpages of central public authorities (APC) were analyzed between May 20 and August 1, 2012, within the project “Monitoring the implementation of anticorruption policies in APC”, funded by Soros Moldova Foundation.