Under Act No. 71/13 dated 24 September 2013, a Citizens Association requested the opinion of the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection on whether the information about a list of centres for social work, which have in the course of 2012 removed children from their families for safety reasons, and the number of children removed by each centre from their family on those grounds, can be considered confidential or public. It has been emphasized that the data have been withheld for centres where the number of removed children is less than three, and that the Association does not intend to obtain personal information about children and their families.

In this regard, the Commissioner has notified the Association as follows:

Pursuant to Article 4 of the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance ("Official Gazette of the Republic of Serbia" Nos. 120/04, 54/07, 104/09 and 36/10), there is a legal assumption of the existence of a legitimate public interest to know in relation to all information held by public authorities, with the possibility for the authority to demonstrate that in that particular situation there is a contravening overriding interest.

Exemptions from the right to access information prescribed by articles 9, 13 and 14 of the Law are not absolute and do not automatically lead to the denial or limitation of exercise of rights without prior weighing the contravening interests and potential adverse consequences, in accordance with Article 8 of the Law.

In relation to the information in question, the Commissioner is of the opinion that it would be very difficult to prove that, the publication of the names of centres for social work which have temporarily removed children from their families due to safety reasons as well as statistical data on the number of the children at each centre, violates the right to privacy of children and their families or any other important good of a person.

Statistical and anonymized data do not constitute personal data within the meaning of Article 3 of the Law on Personal Data Protection ("Official Gazette of the Republic of Serbia " Nos. 97/08 and 104/09-other law, 68/12- decision of the Constitutional Court, and 107/12) and their publication, as a type of data processing, is not in contravention to this Law.

Regardless of the number, identification of the children removed from families by communicating the number of such cases in the territory of one of the centres for social work, and thereby violation of privacy of the children and their families, would hypothetically be possible only based on the comparison of the data with previously disclosed other information on the same cases, and it is a matter to be assessed and proven on a case by case basis.

No. 011-00-00629/2013-02 dated 27 September 2013.