SECOND WORKING MEETING WITH UNDP

Today, a second meeting with UNDP representatives was held in the premises of the Agency. The topic of today’s meeting was the transparency of the municipalities, the methodology used, the presentation of the conducted monitoring and the results.

UNDP implements this activity within their project, Strengthening of Municipal Councils, with a planned implementation period from 2021 to 2028. Within the framework of the project, from the very beginning until now, 44 municipalities have been covered. It is expected that 20 more municipalities will be involved by the end of the project.

In this direction, the Agency clarified its Methodology for monitoring the Active Transparency of municipalities and presented the results of its annual reports — an activity that the Agency has been implementing since 2018.

Also, Director Plamenka Bojcheva emphasized the numerous benefits of using the Law on Free Access to Public Information — both for investigative journalists and for municipalities and other state institutions. At the same time, she emphasized once again that this law enables civil participation in the decision-making and implementation of decisions that are of public interest to each individual.

At the meeting, common interests from further cooperation within the framework of this project were emphasized, and future collaboration with the Agency within the framework of the other two active UNDP projects, where an entire component will be dedicated to activities related to free access, was specified.

The announced cooperation will start in 2024 and will take place within several projects.