Source: Blic
It has been four years since the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance has been passed, under which the “new” institution - the Commissioner for Information - has been established.
Many people think that during those four years the “new” institution has managed to affirm itself, to achieve certain results, even to receive valuable recognitions.
These evaluations make even more valuable the fact that the Commissioner has been working in inadequate condition all the time with several times smaller number of associates than envisaged, while workload has been constantly increasing. Problems have been increasing, we have had as many as three different governments, but in spite of Commissioner's urge, they have not been solving spatial, logistic and other problems, activating some mechanisms important for access to information or accepting initiatives for passing the necessary regulations. Recently, the Government has dealt with the Commissioner for Information after all, although not exactly in expected way. The Government proposed and the National Assembly adopted the new Law on Personal Data Protection. This increased the Commissioner's duties several times and at the same time introduced the possibility (which otherwise does not exist anywhere in comparable law) to limit his (already relatively poor) authorities. And at the same time the Government did not solve any of the Commissioner's problems, activated mechanisms for enforcement of his decisions or dealt with initiatives to make his work more efficient.It is really high time this institution building stopped. I am not saying this because of the Commissioner for Information, but because this concept is increasingly taking hold. This institution building is becoming a habit and it is spreading to other new institutions which we are introducing in our legal order to ensure the implementation of new European legal standards in the fields of monitoring, fight against corruption and human rights protection and it threatens to make some of them seem inefficient in the eyes of the citizens, to which they should serve, and to compromise them even before they “stand on their feet”.
Rodoljub Sabic, Commissioner for Information
