There has been practice within Bulgarian authorities to withhold internal documents related to public procurements.
In August 2012, there was a positive step towards opening that kind of information.
In July 2012, Ms. Boryana Dimitrova, head of the prominent agency for marketing and social research Alpha Research, requested the protocol of the selection commission under the public procurement on sociological survey on the topic: Finding the effect of policies related to youth on young people. The company has applied to this tender but was denied the assignment. The ground was that Alpha Research failed to meet the deadline for providing the justification for the price offered.
The Ministry of Education, Youth and Science who registered the request sent the applicant a letter stating that an answer will be provided in a prolonged period due to the necessity to obtain third party’s consent for the provision of the information.
With the assistance of AIP, Ms. Dimitrova argued an opinion that it was not necessary to seek third party’s consent in the said circumstances. She stated that the protocol reflects the commission members’ deliberations and cannot be related to third party interests. She also added that a company awarded to perform public procurement is subject to the Bulgarian Access to Public Information Act and the information is in any case of overriding public interest. Moreover, the provision of such information thus has the legitimate aim of promoting the transparency and accountability, as well as preventing corruption in public procurement which is one of the well-known corruption prone areas of the public administration.
The arguments raised by AIP were apparently accepted by the Chief Secretary of the ministry who disclosed a copy of the requested protocol. The content of the protocol showed that Alpha Research was illegitimately struck out of the list of candidates on the ground of not sending timely the requested justification. In fact, the justification was registered with the commission on 20 June, while the selection committee had set the deadline on 21 June.
The case was widely reported by the media.
The precedent opens a whole set of documents related to the deliberations of selection committees in public procurement.