REPORT ON THE VERIFICATION OF PUBLISHED DOCUMENTS AND INFORMATION THAT PUBLIC ENTERPRISES AND STATE-OWNED JOINT-STOCK COMPANIES AND PUBLIC ENTERPRISES UNDER THE JURISDICTION OF MUNICIPALITIES AS INFORMATION HOLDERS ARE OBLIGED TO PUBLISH ON THEIR WEBSITES

 

The Agency, in accordance with its competences, but also as an added value of free access to public information in relation to the proactive publication of information pursuant to Article 10 of the Law on FAPI, carried out monitoring of 49 holders, i.e. on the websites of holders from public enterprises under its jurisdiction of the City of Skopje and municipalities, as well as of public enterprises and state-owned joint stock companies, 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 September 19 to October 10, 2023.

The proactively published holders’ information should be easily accessible and understandable, usable, relevant to citizens and regularly updated. Information is a prerequisite for responsible government and a basis for democratic processes – information about the work of the holders enables citizens to adequately draw conclusions and participate in decision-making on issues that are of interest to them. Transparency and access to public information are inseparable instruments in the fight against corruption.

According to the monitoring methodology, 10 holders have a high level of transparency, 30 holders have a medium level of transparency, and 9 holders of information have a low level of transparency from the monitored 49 holders of information. As a result, the monitored holders have a mean value of proactive transparency.

However, this does not mean that the holders should be satisfied with their transparency because the websites of the most significant number of holders from this group of monitored institutions do not readily provide specific information that interests citizens/public information requesters.

According to the monitoring results, the most transparent is J.P. Communal Hygiene-Skopje with 49.5 points, A.D. MEPSO-Skopje and A.D. TEC NEGOTINO-Negotino with 42 points out of a total of 55 points. To this end, we would also like to emphasise that the websites of the best-ranked institutions have an easy and accessible way of making public information of interest to the requesters. Therefore, we hereby encourage them to monitor and build on the proactive transparency and accountability in their work regarding the citizens.

The monitoring of the websites of the public enterprises under the jurisdiction of the municipalities and the City of Skopje and the public enterprises and joint-stock companies in state ownership showed that as holders of public information, they should invest much more effort to improve and strengthen their proactivity towards the citizens as much as possible. The information they publish should be placed in a separate banner/link under the title LIST OF INFORMATION/FREE ACCESS TO INFORMATION, which will make it easily accessible to the requesters of information and thus reduce the number of requests for free access to public information.