The public demands to open registers and renew access to public information – a statement

After the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, a number of state institutions hid some public information, in particular in the form of open data about their work, closed state registers and suspended information about their work.

The main justification for this was security considerations, although the analysis shows that this explanation is not suitable for all data and they were closed for other reasons. Such a policy significantly worsened the transparency of the work of state bodies and local self-government bodies, and citizens lost operational access to open data, which is of significant public interest.

Closedness of state registers and lack of access to socially important data leads to corruption, lack of accountability and responsibility and, most importantly, to loss of trust in key state institutions.

In the conditions of war, this has devastating consequences, because the war did not become an obstacle for corruption, and the closure of public information created the basis for its spread. Therefore, we have recently seen a number of anti-corruption investigations that expose the abuse of politicians and officials at the highest level.

Because of that, the investigation of corruption acts takes place contrary to the closure of data, through its sources of information, journalists. And total secrecy can create the impression in the society that these investigations are conducted in closed conditions, that corruption can be covered by both the Parliament and the leadership of the Government, since it is these authorities that influence the policies regarding access to data.

Public organizations and mass media have repeatedly written about the fact that there is a line between security issues and the accountability of state and local self-government bodies. After all, the war, like covid, became an opportunity for some politicians, officials, and judges to close data and block public control over their work. Only in certain and clearly defined cases can the restriction of access to information be justified during war.

Please note that open data is an effective component of countering the aggressor, an important factor that does not weaken, but, on the contrary, strengthens and strengthens the work of our bodies as organizational and management structures. It is thanks to open data that citizens can qualitatively analyze the situation in the country and communities, make operational changes in decision-making and increase the transparency, accountability and efficiency of state and local self-government bodies, even in conditions of martial law.

Access to open registries and databases for the private sector is critical from the point of view of checking the integrity of contractors, clients, partners and potential employees, and therefore – a guarantee of security and economic stability of both a specific company and the state as a whole. In addition, entrepreneurs have the opportunity to more actively participate in anti-corruption monitoring and control of government actions, as well as help with the implementation of the sanctions policy in the fight against the terrorist state.

Open data helps save taxpayers’ money, develop the business environment and prevent corruption. Therefore, a clear balance must be found between the issues of national security and defense and the issue of openness and accountability, which was also discussed at the international conference in Lugano.

Based on the above, the state should immediately restore:

declaration to control the income of politicians and officials and compare their standard of living with the funds received;

reporting for parties for received government funding;

completeness of information about the work of people’s deputies on the website of the VRU and about the activities of parliamentary committees;

restore access to the Unified register of legal entities and individual entrepreneurs and other registers of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, taking into account legal restrictions and justifying the impossibility of disclosure;

strengthen control over compliance with the Law “On Access to Public Information”, as a number of authorities and local self-government bodies abuse martial law and do not provide information to citizens;

restore access to that part of the information in the court register that was hidden in violation of the Law “On Access to Court Decisions”;

the register of seized assets administered by ARMA;

auctions on Prozorro and the publication of purchase agreements.

to start work on the release of public information by managers in the form of open data in accordance with Decree #835, and in the case of impossibility of releasing data, to release the results of the three-fold test with the justification of the impossibility of releasing data.

To remind, the RISE Ukraine coalition recently published an appeal regarding the need to fully open the Unified State Register of Legal Entities and Individuals. The closure of the EDR and exclusive access to it make it impossible to carry out anti-corruption activities, in particular, public control/monitoring of the reconstruction process in order to minimise abuses.