On February 15, 2019 in Sofia, Access to Information Programme (AIP) held the annual meeting with the journalists of its country-wide coordinators' network.

 

AIP Executive Director Gergana Jouleva presented key achievements from AIP advocacy activities in 2018. The 2019 goals and challenges before the AIP and the coordinators' network were outlined.

 

The Head of AIP legal team Alexander Kashumov presented the AIP statements submitted on draft laws and proposed amendments in 2018 re the Administrative Procedure Code, the Personal Data Protection Act in line with the General Data Protection Regulation, the government Access to Information Platform, Regulations for the work and organization of the Civil Society Development Council, Penal Code.

 

Kiril Terziiski, attorney from the AIP legal team, presented statistics and characteristics of the cases referred to AIP for legal help and consultation during 2018. Kiril Terziiski presented an overview of ATI litigation.

 

Diana Bancheva, AIP communications coordinator, presented statistics of the AIP web sites traffic and social networks AIP is part of.

 

Stephan Anguelov from the AIP legal team, who is the Open Government Partnership (OGP) Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM) researcher for Bulgaria, presented the developments regarding Bulgaria’s implementation of the Third National Action Plan within the global Open Government Partnership initiative.

 

Based on a number of interviews, the AIP coordinators, all of them journalists in the regional cities of Bulgaria, drew a picture on the state of access to information on a municipal and regional level.

 

AIP presented the Coordinator of the Year award to Emilia Dimitrova, AIP coordinator in Gabrovo. Interview with Dimitrova is also published in the AIP monthly FOI Newsletter for February 2019 (in Bulgarian).

 

The annual meeting was held within the project Transparency Advice Center supported by the America for Bulgaria Foundation.