AROUND 75 per cent of requests for information from government bodies go ignored, a recent report on access to information shows.
Ten bodies in the south and ten in the north were monitored between May and August last year for their response to questions such as, ‘how many people sought citizenship in 2009?’, ‘how many people work in night clubs?’ or asking for the names of the heads of departments.
A total of 73 per cent of requests went ignored in the south and 78 per cent in the north. Eight per cent of questions were fully answered in the republic and seven in the north.
“The lack of access to information from local authorities in Cyprus is a serious problem,” said one of the researchers from the Institute for Social-Political Studies (IKME).
The institute’s Open Cyprus Research Report, released last week, states some of the benefits of a transparent government: increase in trust, improving internal efficiency of administrations and strengthening policy and decision-making.
Lack of transparency “is likely to have a serious knock-off effect” in those areas, the authors warn.
Among the monitored authorities in the south were the ministries of interior, commerce, health, labour and the municipalities of Limassol and Nicosia.
The ‘ministries’ of interior, health, economy and energy as well as the administrative bodies for north Nicosia and Famagusta, were among the monitored bodies in the north.
“The questions were simple and… of public interest so that the information requested would not fall under one of the 11 legitimate exceptions of the Council of Europe Convention on Access to Official Documents,” the report states.
A total of 393 requests were sent in the whole of Cyprus (173 in the north) via email, phone calls, post, hand-delivered letters, fax and web-forms.
“We asked different people, at various times and departments to demonstrate what was a genuine issue,” said researcher Orestis Tringides.
The 105 page-long report consisted of an island-wide opinion survey, interviews with civil society representatives, an extensive legal analysis, a survey on existing online information as well as a monitoring of public bodies.
It was carried out by Access Info Europe, EU Cyprus Association (KAB) and IKME as part of a two year bicommunal initiative.
In a separate part of the study evaluating the availability of online information the republic scored 36 per cent, the authorities in the north a mere 13 per cent.
A score was given for 23 different kinds of information with a maximum of two points for each category.
There was almost no information on finances, procurements, contracts, budget, salaries, subsidies, meeting minutes, evaluations, decisions and policies for public bodies on both sides of the divide.
For the researchers, insult was added to injury at the meeting they held to discuss the report with 20 invited government officials and MPs. Only three civil servants showed up, and no MPs.
Read the report online at www.accessinfocyprus.eu. Learn about a group pushing for transparency of information at www.transparencycyprus.org.
