Websites of national executive bodies fail to meet the legal requirements

Monitoring "Government bodies of the Republic of Belarus: 15 years online" was performed lawyers of the Legal Transformation Center (Lawtrend). They studied 45 sites of government agencies and organizations.

The purpose of the research was to reveal the extent to which the content of the official websites of the republican bodies subordinate Council of Ministers corresponds to the provisions of national legislation on the right of citizens to have access to information about the activities of government agencies.

Analysis of the monitoring results showed that the sites of republican executive authorities do not comply with legal requirements. The information posted on them does not fully comply with the requirements of the national legislation as well as with technical requirements for the maintenance and operation of sites. None of the studied sites provided all the required categories of information.

The maximum possible rate of representation of information, equal to 100%, was not observed at any of the studied websited. The average percentage of informational content was 30.9 %. The highest value – 52 % – is observed at the official site of the National Bank, the minimal – 12.1% – at the website of the Operational and Analytical Center under the President of the Republic of Belarus.

The researchers concluded that the official sites of the republican executive bodies are a limited one-sided media rather than an effective tool for providing access to information held by public authorities.

The official websites of the studied government bodies and institutions provide news, information about the current activities of these bodies, as well as contact information. Information on the implementation of administrative procedures, higher bodies and structural subdivisions, implementation of the budget and public procurement, the possibilities of appeal against actions of state authority and the procedures and conditions of taking up the civil service is provided only by some of the websites and is far from being complete.

In addition, none of the public authorities fulfilled the requirement to publish all information in the both state languages, Belarusian and Russian. Only 8 out of the 45 sites publish a part of the information in Belarusian. The Ministry of Culture is the only authority, which has only the Belarusian version.