Names and positions of responsible persons to issue sanctions in the Social Support Agency

Centre of Independent Living vs. the Social Support Agency

First Instance – administrative case No. 62/2007, Administrative Court – Sofia city, Panel-23
Second Instance – administrative case No 6700/2007, SAC, Third Division

Request:
In January 2007, Kapka Panyotova, executive director of the association Centre for Independent Living – Sofia submitted a request to the Social Support Agency (SSA) asking for information described in two points as follows:
1. Names and positions of the officials appointed by the director of the SSA responsible for issuing protocols of violations on the basis of Art. 55, Para. 1 of the Disabled People Integration Act (DPIA), and
2. The number of issued protocols finding administrative violations of the DPIA for the period 2005 and 2006, as well as the total amount of sanctions imposed during the same period.

Refusal:
With a decision as of February 14, 2007, the executive director of the SSA refused to provide the requested information. The stated ground for refusal of the information under point 1 was that the names and the positions of the officials appointed on the basis of Art. 55, Para. 1 of the DPIA, constituted personal data according to the definition stipulated by Art. 2, Para. 3 of the Personal Data Protection Act PDPA). Pursuant to the same provision of the special act, the Access to Public Information Act was not applicable for access to personal data. In terms of the information requested under point 2, access was denied with the argument that the particular information was processed by the Disabled People Agency as stipulated by Art. 55 of the DPIA.

Complaint:
The refusal was challenged before the Administrative Court – Sofia city (ACSC). It was argued in the complaint that the information requested under point 1 could not be personal data, as the purpose of the PDPA was protection of personal life, while information about the activities of an official was just the opposite to personal life, as those activities were related to public life due to the exercise of public power by an institution which serves the society and the citizens. With regard to point 2 of the request, it was emphasized that no hypothesis for issuing a refusal followed from the statement of the fact that the requested information had been processed by the Disabled People. No redirection of the request as provided by Art. 32 of the APIA was made. Also no data existed that the SSA did not dispose of the requested information. Even the contrary, the provision of Art. 55, Para. 5 of the DPIA, quoted in the challenged refusal, established an obligation for the bodies under Art. 55, Para. 1 to provide annually (until December 31) the relevant data to the Disabled People Agency. Since the SSA was a body under the particular provision, it should have the requested information.

Developments in the Court of First Instance:
The case was heard in an open court session and scheduled for judgment.

Court Decision:
With a decision No. 1 as of May 16, 2007, a panel of the ACSC repealed the refusal and returned the request back to the SSA for reconsideration of point 1 of the request after seeking the consent of the third party, and obligated the SSA to provide access to the information requested under point 2. In their judgment, the justices assumed that the information under point 1 did not constitute personal data with regard to the respective officials, but at the same time, the court presumed that consent for disclosure of those that should be obtained. As for the information requested under point 2, the justices pointed out that the circumstance that SSA was obliged to provide reports for investigations and imposed sanctions to the Disabled People Agency annually, did not remove the obligation for provision of the same information under the procedure stipulated by the APIA and may not be used as a ground for the refusal.