Montenegrin prosecutions fully implement part of the Law on Free Access to Information (Law on FAI) regarding proactive publishing of information and all data stipulated by the Law can be found on their website, shows a research conducted by Center for Democratic Transition (CDT).

Comparing to the last year, when they proactively published only 4% of information, the prosecutions are now publishing 99%.

The research included 16 institutions: the Supreme Public Prosecutor’s Office, 2 High Public Prosecutor’s Offices and 13 Basic Public Prosecutor’s Offices.

CDT Director, Dragan Koprivica said that following last year’s unacceptable results we initiated specific actions – CDT signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Supreme Public Prosecutor’s Office and upon appointment of the new Supreme Public Prosecutor, an action plan with measures for necessary changes was prepared.

“We formed a joint team which will implement proposed measures and agreed upon a starting point – implementation of the Law on FAI i.e. the part regarding proactive publishing of information”, said Koprivica and added that today the first results of the several months work i.e. effects of joint work are published.

What was measured?

Koprivica explained that progress was measured by 12 indicators and gave an overview of the most important ones:

• Publishing information on programs and work plans of the prosecutions
• Publishing information on public procurement
• Publishing data on earnings of officials

“Publishing lists of employees significantly improved transparency, therefore we have an impressive improvement from 0% in 2014 to 100% in 2015”, he said and added:

“If we compare the prosecutions’ compliance with this part of the Law with other bodies, we will see that it is now at the top by achieved result: according to measures from 2015, average percent at the level of ministries was 63%, 47% at the level of independent administrative bodies, while bodies within the ministries averaged only 20%”.

He thinks that amount of work done is the best illustrated by the fact that in the last couple of months there have been even 2500 new entries on the website tuzilastvocg.me.

“We are, of course, continuing with implementation of planned activities – in the next period we will focus on direct connection of citizens with the prosecution, relations of the prosecution with media, work jointly on building capacities of the Prosecution Council Secretariat for PR relations, but also increase the budget transparency of the prosecutions” said Koprivica.

The Supreme Public Prosecutor Ivica Stanković said at the press conference that he is not hiding satisfaction with published research results.

“We went from the most closed to the institution with the best results when it comes to publishing information”, said Stanković.

He emphasized that results did not come by itself but that they are the consequence of dedication and professional relationship which lead to desired goal.

According to his words, there is an impression that part of the public has great expectations from the prosecution, especially in the part regarding fight against corruption and organized crime.

“All information is available to media and general public”, said Stanković and added that their work is under constant public scrutiny, but they are not refusing responsibility.

“We will fulfill public’s right to know, but in certain cases, full information can not be disclosed. We have to respect the presumption of innocence”, said Stanković.

The new and re-designed website tuzilastvocg.me was presented at the press-conference.

Portal CDT

11 August 2015