Bulgaria’s Ministry of Defense is the most transparent institution and Belitsa Municipality situated in Southwestern Bulgaria is at the bottom of the ranking, data of a research organized by the Access to Information Programme held between February 23 and March 23 this year show. For the purpose, the foundation has studied and evaluated the internet pages of 544 administrative structures of the Bulgarian government on central, district and local level. In 2000 Bulgaria adopted the Access to Public Information Act. There are a total of 102 similar acts worldwide, but when Bulgaria adopted this act, their number was much lower abroad, Alexander Kashamov who works as legal expert at a non-governmental organization explains.

Does, however, the local administration adhere to local decrees? It turned out that all 544 monitored institutions have web sites. However, less than half of these structures fulfill the requirement to publish their budgets and annual financial reports. Only 263 of them published the declarations of their employees regarding conflict of interests. According to experts, the access to information regarding public procurement orders has improved. This is due to the amendments to the Public Procurement Act adopted in October 2014, as well as to the activity of the Public Procurement Agency. The legislative amendments oblige the institutions to publish more information about the announcements concerning the public procurement orders, methods of selections, types of contracts and payments under given contracts in a special section entitled Purchaser’s Profile. The research shows that in 2015 some 83% of the companies published their decisions regarding the start of public procurement procedures. However, less than one-third of all companies provided information about payments made under given contracts. Here is what Darina Pavlova from the Access to Information Programme told Radio Bulgaria:

“The obligation of the buyer to publish on its Internet profile all contracts signed with contractors under public procurement orders had a positive result. It turned out that 54% of the institutions have already published these contracts, whereas only 2% of them did so in the past. This is a significant step forward towards the transparency of this type of information, which would prevent all types of misuse of public finance.”

Although the number of the publications in the Access to Information Section has risen by 10% in 2015, the representatives of the non-governmental organization insist on other changes, too.

“We believe that the competent institutions must undertake special measures aimed at improving the contents of the Access to Information sections, because they contain information, which provides details to the Bulgarian citizens about their rights, what information is unavailable, how they can access the information database of a given institution, etc”, Executive Director of the Access to Information Programme Gergana Zhuleva told Radio Bulgaria. It would enable the citizens to use their fundamental rights more easily.

English version: Kostadin Atanasov