Access to Public Information Act
The Access to Public Information Act (APIA) was promulgated in State Gazette No. 55 as of July 7, 2000
Till then the right of access to information had not been subject to special regulation. So far only procedures regarding the access to environmental information and access to public registers were set forth by law. Access to public information laws exist in most democratic countries. It helps any natural or legal person who seek public information as it gives access to the most complete database – the database of the State.
The last amendments of the APIA were promulgated in State Gazette No. 97 as of December 11, 2015.
The Access to Information Programme has taken an active part in all stages of the public debate and consultation process. The amendments are directed at improvement of both the regulation for the provision of public information, as well as the regime of the so called re-use of public sector information. More specifically:
- An extended list of 17 categories of information subject to proactive online publication and a timeframe;
- An obligation for the heads of public bodies to review annually and update the lists of categories of information to be published online based on real public demand;
- A regulated procedure for accepting e-requests and providing information by e-mail free of charge;
- Administrative sanctions for incompliance with the obligations for proactive online publication;
- A government maintained platform for filing e-requests, containing the responses of the public bodies and the documents provided;
- Establishment of an open data portal of government information sets and resources.