Which Ukrainian ministries are most secretive?

A survey carried out by the Ukrainian Independent Political Research Centre has found that the Ministry of Transport and Communications provides the most information on its website, while the Ministry of Environmental Protection has the least.

These were some of the findings made public on 29 May by Maxim Latsyba, Programme Manager of the Centre at a press conference.

Between 10 and 18 May, the Centre carried out monitoring of 58 central executive bodies and 27 regional state administrations to ascertain the level of implementation of the Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 3 of 4 January 2002 “On the provision of information on the Internet about the work of executive bodies”. The latter stipulates 20 types of obligatory information for central executive agencies and 25 types for regional state administrations.

At present 19 of the 20 Ministries have official websites. There is as yet no site for the Ministry of Housing and Communal Services created in March.

The average level of openness in providing information is 68%.

As well as the Ministry of Transport and Communications which had a score of 86.67%, the other most informative sites were those of the Ministry of Agricultural Policy (85%), and the Ministry of the Economy (81.67%).

The least forthcoming with information were found to be the websites of the Ministry of Environmental Protection (48.33%), the Ministry of the Coal Industry (52.67%), and the Ministry of Defence (55.67%).

The least amount of information is to be gleaned about the implementation of target programmes (26.33%), about regulatory activity (35.33%) and about procedure for registering and licensing various types of activity in the relevant sector (44.33%).

The average level of information openness among regional state administrations was 69.38%, 10% up on the figure in February 2006.

The most informative are the websites of the regional state administrations for the Kyiv region (92%), the Zaporizhya region (88%), and the Dnipropetrovsk region (84%).

The following regional state administrations were found to be the least informative: the Lviv region (37.33%), Chernivtsi region  (48%), and Luhansk region  (55.67%).

On the sites of the administrations, the least information was to be had about the procedure for appealing against decisions taken by the relevant agency (18.67%), about procedure for registering and licensing some types of activity in the relevant sector (38.33%), and about the forms for documents and other material needed in order to apply to a regional state administration (42%).

Both central and local executive agencies are most forthcoming about the name of the body, its management and structure.

The Centre is planning to ask President Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yanukovych to issue reprimands to the heads of central executive agencies and regional state administrations whose level of information is lower than 75% (this threshold was only crossed by five ministries and 10 regional state administrations).

Latsyba said that a total of 19 governors (i.e. heads of the administrations) had received reprimands after similar monitoring carried out in February 2006.

The Centre is also planning to ask the Prosecutor General to carry out official enquiries and punish slack heads.