Procedure of government bodies in case of already published
As for information already available to the public, under the provision of the Art. 10 of the Law on Free Access to Information of Public importance („Official Gazette of the RS" No.120/04), it is laid down that the authority is not obliged to enable the applicant to exercise his right to access to information, if information in question is already published and available in the country or at Internet, but the government body in that case is obliged to answer the request of the applicant, to indicate the information vehicle or number of the official gazette where information was published, save for it is generally known.
The notion "generally known", within the meaning of these provisions, aside from the conditions regarding availability to a large number of citizens, certainly depends on a range of concrete circumstances, such as, for example, on who the enquirer is, is the enquirer a person to whom the official gazettes are available at work place due to the nature of the job he performs, if the person is in employment, then, on his educational level, profession etc. The circumstance that the applicant himself referred to the provision as a possible information source, quoting the official gazette which had published it, indicated a possible availability of information to him, and in such a case, the government body will in its reply to the enquirer only confirm where the information is contained and published. This holds true provided that the said regulation actually contains the information required in the request. Such a situation, however, does not discharges the public authorities from proceeding, i.e. providing answer to the enquirer.
In case when general deeds of the enterprise or other person are concerned, which are not officially published, and at the time of requiring cannot be found, or are not available on other information vehicle (website, advertisement board and the like), information cannot be withheld referring to the provisions of the Art. 10 of the Law, with explanation that such general deeds used to be displayed at advertisement board of the enterprise prior to entering into force.
(The answer is contained in the letter sent to a government body, no. 07-00-76/2005-04 of 30.09.2005. and no. 011-00-18/2005-01 of 25.11.2005.)
