On January 20, the Freedom of Speech Protection Committee published the results of monitoring official sites of state bodies.

The top three official sites in the ratings of state bodies of executive power are, respectively, those of Ministry of Transport and Communications, Ministry of Labor and Social Issues and Ministry of Education and Science.

The sites were assessed by several principles - availability, integrity, urgency and accessibility (i.e. how easy it is to find the information) of information required by the society. Each principle had its standards and substandards. The methodology developed by the Saint Petersburg Institute of Development of Information Freedom was used in the assessment.

According to the assessment ranking, the site of the state body recognized the first had 50.48 % transparency which Mesrop Harutyunyan, expert of the Freedom of Speech Protection Committee considers to be quite high. He says the above percent could have been even higher if the site did not have the commercial of the mobile operator. The site of the State Revenues Committee, that was on the last place and had only 3.20 % transparency, was "the most incomprehensible and confused", according to the expert.

The sites of the RA Police and Ministry of Justice are at the bottom of the ranking, respectively, with 17.44% and 12.60 % transparency. The Ministry of Emergency Situations was not considered since it had no site.

Ashot Melikyan, head of the Freedom of Speech Protection Committee, emphasizes that the monitoring of the sites has been accomplished in September-October of 2010 and it is not excluded that there could have been changes after that.   

Sites of five state bodies have been considered separately and no ranking was made since their operations are not comparable (RA President's site - 34.44%, National Assembly site - 37.80%, RA Government site - 41.82%, RA Constitutional Court site - 38.38% and RA Prosecutor General Office site - 55.70% transparency).

"The study of the state bodies' sites shows that the information concerning disputing decisions and actions (inactions) of officials are closed for the public," the report on the monitoring reads. Among the shortcomings is the fact that the sites provide no information on vacancies, order of civil service and results of contests.    

The Chairman of the Freedom of Speech Protection Committee assures that the results of the monitoring will be presented to all state bodies along with recommendations on site improvements.  

It has to be mentioned that the monitoring of the sites of Armenian state bodies has been accomplished with the support of the Open Society Foundations, Armenia.

Mary Alexanyan

Source: www.hra.am