Information newsletter
Issue 7(19), July 2005

Request Experience: The Lists of Official Secret—Between the Interesting and the Incredible
Fany Davidova, AIP

In May this year, the team of AIP prepared and sent requests to all ministries and some state agencies, demanding the Lists of information categories which specified the official secret in the particular institution. The aim of this initiative was to review the lists and see whether:

• all institutions have such lists;
• the categories of information specified as official secret comply with the requirements stipulated by the Access to Public Information Act (APIA).

Pursuant to Article 21, Paragraph 1 of the Regulations for the Implementation of the Protection of Classified Information Act (RIPCIA), the heads of the administrative units are obliged to announce the List of information categories that are subject to official secret with an order. Furthermore, Art. 21, Para. 5 of the RIPCIA stipulates that these Lists are public information. However, the Lists of official secret information are not only undoubtedly public, but they also fall into the scope of Art. 15, Para.1, Item 2 of the APIA,¹ which establishes the obligation for the heads of the institutions to publish them. Up to that moment, AIP was not aware of any case of active publication. This was the other reason for our initiative—we wanted to stimulate the heads of the institutions to publish the Lists of the official secret categories, on their Internet sites for example.

Several of the answers we obtained would be considered interesting and one was simply incredible.

The Interesting Outcomes
1.In most of the institutions, we were given information by the information security official, rather than the official responsible for the provision of access to information.
2. Indeed, several of the institutions we checked did not have Lists of official secret categories.
3.The length of the Lists in different institutions differed considerably—from seven to 58 categories.

The Incredible Outcome
Pursuant to the “List of information categories, documents, and materials, which should be classified as official secret in the Energy sector,” approved by the Minister of Energy with Order No. 14-178/31.05.2005, the following falls under the category of official secret : “Any information regarding activities, violations, and accidents which might be harmful to the health and safety of the citizens that has been prepared for the Minister of Energy and Energy Resources, for the State Agency of Nuclear Regulation, and the Emergency Management Agency. Information that has been prepared and submitted to the Bulgarian News Agency and the mass media with the exception is excluded from the category.”

The fact that today, nineteen years after the Chernobyl crisis, there is a Bulgarian official who assumes that information regarding people’s life and health could be kept secret, is really horrifying. It came out that today, just like nineteen years ago, the minister of energy and energy resources works with different information from that disclosed to the society through the mass media.

It is irrelevant to state that classification of this kind of information as official secret contradicts both the international standards in the area² and the Bulgarian legislation enacting access to information.³ No legal arguments can persuade a sane human mind that information related to any kind of threat to life and health could be concealed from the majority and disclosed to the chosen few.

1. Art. 15, Para. 1 “In order to achieve transparency of the administration's activities, and for the purpose of maximum facilitation of access to public information, every chief officer of an administrative structure within the system of the executive power shall publish on a regular basis up-to-date information containing: (item2) list of the acts issued within the scope of its powers.
2.Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making, and Access to Justice on Environmental Matters; ratified by the adoption of a law by the 39th National Assembly on 2 October 2003 (promulgated in the State Gazette, issue 91 as of 14 October 2003. Issued by the Ministry of Environment and Waters
3.Art. 14, Para. 2, Item 2 of APIA and Art.23 of the Protection of Environmental Act