DECLASSIFYING GOVERNMENT NOT EASY
By Valeria Korchagina Staff Writer Want to know which road in your neighborhood will be repaved first? Or how many of your tax rubles went to buy your favorite minister's snazzy leather chair?
If so, you have friends in the Economic Development and Trade Ministry, because if it gets its way nearly all government documents will become freely available to the public next year.
According to two laws drafted by the ministry -- one "on information" and the other "on official secrets and confidentiality" -- all municipal, regional and federal government agencies will have to publish such details on the Internet or at least provide them upon request.
"This is not a law on freedom of information. These are laws that oblige the government to work openly," Alexei Simonov, president of the Defense of Glasnost Foundation, said Monday on the sidelines of a brainstorming session on the issue hosted by the ministry and attended by legal experts, human rights activists and representatives of the media.
However, getting parliament to pass the bills, which are part of the federal government's administrative reform project, is no easy feat. Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister Mikhail Dmitriyev said one of the drafts, officially titled "On Providing Information on Activities of State and Municipal Government," has been shelved in the Cabinet for the past five months.
The other law, titled "On [for office-use only] Secrets and the Rules of Dealing With Confidential Information," which is meant to work in tandem with the first law, is still being tinkered with.
"What we hope for is that once the law on information is passed, the law on secrets will become a priority for the Cabinet," Dmitriyev said, adding that he expected the first law to be passed some time next year.
Simonov, though, said both drafts are being fiercely resisted by the government bodies that will be most affected by them. For example, the number of types of documents that must be released under the first law shrank from 52 to 37 before it even got to the Cabinet, he said.
Currently, bureaucrats can "classify" documents that they themselves compose. But the Economic Development and Trade Ministry is proposing to create special commissions, partly comprised of independent observers, to decide which documents should be classified.
"Yes, the drafts have many weak spots, but they still represent an unprecedented development. These laws are for society to grow into," Simonov said.
Moscow Times Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2003. Page 7