For the first time in the nation’s history, Ukraine will celebrate the Right to Know Day together with the rest of the civilized world later this month. The law on access to public information has been on books in this country for four months already. It has brought truly European standards into our lives. Only to think that an official is now legally required to respond to the request of a Ukrainian citizen as soon as in five days!
It is another matter that more than half of Ukrainian citizens do not even know about the existence of this document, so they, of course, make no requests. The actual operation of the law on access to public information was studied by the Democratic Initiatives
Foundation in cooperation with the Razumkov Center within the framework of the Unity for Reform project that was funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID). A total of 2,007 respondents were interviewed for this study throughout Ukraine.
Starting her presentation of the study’s results, the Democratic Initiatives’ director Iryna Bekeshkina notes that the law on access to information could really get process of democratization of the country moving. But in her opinion, it will be effective only if “people will turn to that law when they really need the information in question.” So far, according to the sociologist, the process is in its very beginning stages. According to Bekeshkina, over 52 percent of respondents said they did not know that Ukraine has adopted such a law, 36.5 percent had heard something, but did not know the details, and only 10.6 percent knew about the adoption of this law and its substantive provisions. Overall, 20.6 percent of Ukrainians believe the law will influence their lives in some way, but this effect will not be significant, 4.2 percent expect that the adoption of this law will make the go-vernment more transparent and less corrupt in regard to public information. But the worst of all is the finding that 48.3 percent of respondents believe that the law will do nothing to make the government more transparent and less corrupt.
Commenting on the survey’s results, Bekeshkina says that 13 percent of the population of Ukraine sent requests for information to government agencies at least once in their lives, including the Soviet era years. Their experience was less than inspiring, as only somewhat more than a third (36.5 percent) of those who sent letters received a reasoned response, while almost half (45.5 percent) had to settle for perfunctory replies, and 18 percent received no response at all. This situation determined high levels of pessimism (50 percent) on effectiveness of the law on access to information. The expert goes as far as to speak of “the phenomenon of helplessness,” which occurs in people who are trying to get information about their rights and exercise these rights. At the same time, she believes that promotion and advancement of the law in everyday life needs to be achieved by convincing citizens with “success stories,” when citizens appealed to the authorities, got quite helpful response and came to understand how the law benefited them.
STB TV channel’s reporter Serhii Andrushko has included the law on access to information within the scope of his professional interests. He notes that with its enactment, citizens “got a unique means to check the power of government.” Before its adoption, Andrushko says, “the authorities could easily make decisions behind closed doors.” Andrushko quotes examples of successful appeals to the law. For example, a village in Myrhorod raion, Poltava oblast had its only school closed, as the pupil numbers were allegedly too low to warrant its continued existence. The people of the village were very interested whether their children would get the school bus to carry them to their new place of learning... The district administration sent an “honest answer” saying their budget had no money for it. This perfunctory reply was reprinted by the local media. Authorities had to do something, and on the following day the villagers received their school bus.
Another example is even more impressive. One citizen long pestered the authorities with his requests, only to receive no reply from them. After the law on access to information had been enacted, he greatly puzzled officials by demanding copies of answers to all his previous requests. They had to quickly write and send the answers to all his previous letters and only then they responded to the latest request.
Ukrainian Center for Independent Political Research conducted a study of 35 regional authorities to determine their readiness to implement the law on access to information. The study’s outcomes may be seen as encouraging. For example, 77 percent of authorities that fell in the study’s scope developed and approved the necessary internal regulations on the public information units or designated officials to have responsibility for access to public information. Special places for working with documents were provided by 83 percent of the authorities in question, while 94 percent of them provided services for copying and printing documents, and 57 percent of them took into account requests for information, analyzed them and published the information needed on their websites. The Donetsk and Luhansk regional state administrations, as well as the Dnipropetrovsk regional council were found to be most prepared to work under the law on access to information. Generally speaking, readiness of regional authorities could be considered “encouraging, but insufficient,” notes Viktor Andrusiv, an expert of the methodological group on access to information. He sees the low competence levels of officials who often just do not know how to respond to requests from people and to what documents refer as the main drawback of the law’s actual operation.
At the same time, answering The Day’s question, he says that amending the law would be inadvisable now, because he fears that it would only backfire. To illustrate his concerns, the expert says there are proposals already to exclude from the law provisions on publishing officials’ asset declarations.
