REPORT ON THE MONITORING OF THE WEBSITES OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF NORTH MACEDONIA, THE MINISTRIES AND COMPOSITE BODIES FOR THE YEAR 2023

 

The Agency, in accordance with its competencies, but also as an added value of free access to public information in relation to the proactive publication of information in accordance with Article 10 of the Law on FAPI, conducted monitoring of 51 holders, i.e. on the websites of the holders of the Government of the Republic of North Macedonia, the ministries and composite bodies, covered by the Government’s Transparency Strategy (2019-2022), as part of the holders published on the List of holders of information on the Agency’s website. The monitoring was carried out in the period from November 14 — December 14, 2023.

According to the results of the monitoring, the following are proactively transparent: the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Management and the Ministry of Defense with 49 points, followed by the Ministry of Finance and the Customs Administration with 47 points. We should emphasize that the websites of the best-ranked institutions have an easy and accessible way of making public information of interest to the applicants, and we hereby encourage them to monitor and build on proactive transparency, as well as accountability in their work to the citizens.

The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Management, for the second year in a row, shows the best proactive transparency in relation to Article 10 of the Law on FAPI, together with the Ministry of Defence, which has continuity in its transparency and openness to information seekers.

The lowest transparency was shown by the Geological Institute of the Republic of North Macedonia with only 11 points, followed by the Metrology Bureau with 12 points, the Ministry of Political System and Relations between Communities with 13 points and the State Transport Inspectorate with 13.5 points. These owners should adapt their web pages for the end users, that is, the citizens, for reasons that it is difficult or impossible to obtain information about their work and their functioning on their web pages, which is the basic goal of proactive transparency.

The level of transparency and accountability in the work of the Government of the Republic of North Macedonia, the ministries and the composite bodies have an increasing trend of proactive publication of public information, and their transparency this year has been assessed as very good. Most of the monitored institutions have very good transparency, and the Agency recommends to the holders to consistently respect the transparency and accountability standards in the future, for reasons that only in this way the institutions and their work will be more accessible to the end users, the applicants for public information, i.e. the citizens.