The participants of the roundtable drew attention to the fact that the legislative background in this field was ensured by the Law of Ukraine "On access to public information," which was adopted on January 13 and further enacted on May 9, 2011.
"The law has reformed the relations between the citizens and state authorities," the participants of the roundtable noted.
The legislative framework of the access to information administered by the state structures has revealed both positive and negative aspects during 4.5 years of its existence.
The absolute advantage of the legal framework of Ukraine as against the ones in all other countries was called the term of fulfillment of the request within five working days. At the same time, this term is much longer in other countries (for instance, in Britain it takes 20 days). The participants also paid attention to the fact that in some countries of the European Union officials even ignored the law at the local level.
The attendants also took in account the statistics, according to which today Ukraine is placed the 19th in the world from the standpoint of openness and transparency of governmental structures.
Focusing on the prospects of further development of the legislation in this field, the participants of the event noted the necessity for more precise legislative determination of the status and authorities of state servants, who work with requests for information. It was also said that particular attention is required by legislative terms in different fields of activity of governmental structures.
The participants of the event were Oleksii Sydorenko, the head of the Department of Computerized Systems of the Secretariat of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, and Nataliya Adamovych, the head of the Department for Citizens Appeals of the Secretariat of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.
The organizers of the roundtable were the Information Department of the Secretariat of the Ukrainian Parliament, the USAID Responsible Accountable Democratic Assembly (RADA) Program In Ukraine and the World Bank office in Ukraine.