ANALYSIS OF THE RELATION BETWEEN MOLDOVA’S COMMITMENTS WITHIN THE OGP AND THE ACHIEVED

Republic of Moldova is still in the process of implementing its commitments taken within the OGP, but based on the results achieved so far, we can speak of a medium level of compliance with these commitments. The comparison of the results obtained by Republic of Moldova in the implementation of the OGAP and the respective commitments shows that the best complied with is the commitment regarding the efficient management of public resources. The second commitment, regarding the strengthening of public integrity, is fulfilled partly, whereas the third commitment, regarding the improvement of the quality of public services is quite low.

Open Government Partnership aims to promote, among its member states, transparency, fighting corruption and citizen participation, as well as to promote the use of new information technologies in order to make governments more efficient and responsible. Member states, signatories of the Open Government Declaration, have undersigned to four principles⁴⁷: transparency, citizen participation, accountability, and use of technologies and innovation. The states that join the OGP have to prepare their action plans targeting the following five intervention domains: improving public services, strengthening public integrity and combatting corruption, improving the management of public resources, improving public safety, increasing corporate responsibility⁴⁸. In the same time, the OGP signatories can choose which of these intervention areas will be addressed in their national action plans.

In its OGAP, Moldova committed to focus on three of the mentioned areas, these being reflected in the three OGAP objectives. These are, strengthening public integrity by ensuring a participative decision-making process, citizen participation and increasing transparency in governance; efficient management of public resources through the increase of public spending transparency; improving the quality of public services delivery. In order to reach these objectives and fulfill its commitments, the OGAP included 10 actions composed of 49 sub-actions, 40 of which being scheduled for year 2012 and 9 sub-actions for 2013. Out of the 49 OGAP sub-actions, 16 refer to publishing information for public access, 14 sub-actions refer to modifying the legal framework (drafting or amending of laws, decisions, regulations), 12 sub-actions refer to the development of applications, web-platforms, information systems, portals for interaction and communication with the public, 4 sub-actions refer to reporting activities and internal management, and 3 sub-actions refer to training processes.

As it can be seen from the analysis of the activities scheduled for 2012, overall Moldova has a moderate performance in fulfilling its OGP commitments. This is visible from the level of achievement of every objective individually, as well as from the level of accomplishment of the sub-actions that had to be completed in 2012.

In terms of strengthening public integrity, the following important activities have been successfully carried out: development of the draft law on the reuse of public sector information and the drafting of the

47 http://www.opengovpartnership.org/open-government-declaration

48 OGP Articles Of Governance

http://www.opengovpartnership.org/sites/www.opengovpartnership.org/files/page_files/OGP%20Articles%20Final%20 for%20Posting_04.16.12_0.pdf

37 government decision on the application of the law on the reuse of public sector information. With regard to the improvement of public resources management, among the most important achievements is the transparency increase in the domain of public procurements (Action 9, completed to an extent of 83.13%).

This was achieved among other, through the implementation of the electronic procurement system in the public sector and opening of data regarding the foreign assistance received by Republic of Moldova. In the area of improving the quality of public services, one can mention the gradual digitizing of certain public services and the launching of the www.servicii.gov.md portal, where citizens have access to such e-services as e-Record, e-Licensing, etc.

From the point of view of the relation between OGAP provisions, achieved results and OGP Declaration principles, the situation is as follows.

Transparency. The first OGP principle is that signatory governments have to ensure the availability of information regarding the government activities by promoting increased access to information at every level, consolidate efforts directed at collecting and systematically publishing data regarding government spending and performances in providing the main public services, publishing valuable data in formats that are easily located, understandable, usable and reusable. OGP members commit to acknowledge the importance of open standards for facilitating civil society access to the public data but also for ensuring the interoperability of governmental information systems.

In the Open Government Action Plan there are several activities that are specifically linked to this OGP principle. Among these are the provisions referring to strengthening the capacities of the CPAA to maintain official websites, ensuring transparency in the decision-making process, regular publication of activity reports, opening governmental data, and ensuring transparency of revenues and expenditures. OGAP Action 1, that includes most activities aimed at ensuring the transparency of the public authorities, was only partially completed, to an extent of 39.31%. This shows that public authorities do not yet have a dedicated enough attitude towards ensuring a higher transparency of their activity. Other important activities accomplished in 2012 or in progress, pertaining to the principle of transparency, are the launching of the informational system

“State Registry of Public Procurement” and publication of content on the www.actelocale.md portal. The latter one is important especially due to the fact that it expands the open government processes to the local public administration level. Finally it has to be mentioned that unfortunately, OGAP does not include activities directly aiming at promoting the use of open non-proprietary formats for the publication of governmental data.

Civic participation. The second principle the government committed to under the OGP, is the support of citizen participation in the decision-making and policy formulation. A stronger civic involvement has to be stimulated through the development and use of various tools for collecting feedback from citizens and civil society organizations as well as through encouraging monitoring and evaluation of state institutions’ activity.

OGAP contains several provisions aimed at directly or indirectly contributing to a growth of civic participation, such as the organization of activities directed at promoting open data and development of applications using these data, launching of the online petitions portal petitii.gov.md, adjusting the legal framework on the electronic petitions, and finally the organization of public consultations.

38 The most important instrument implemented by the Government so far in order to make use of the citizen participation potential, is the particip.gov.md portal, which however has certain drawbacks that diminish from its efficiency in the interaction with the public. Another activity accomplished in 2012, that may contribute to an increase of authorities’ transparency but also an increase in civic participation is the drafting and approval of the Guidelines on the use of social networks by the public administration authorities. This may contribute to an increased visibility of authorities’ actions, especially of the ones where citizens can get involved too. In the same time there is a risk that CPAA social networks will be only used as yet another tool for broadcasting news and press-releases on the institutions’ official activities such as protocol visits and travels of the top management, or various inter-ministerial sport competitions, etc. At this moment this function is already accomplished by the CPAA official websites.

Accountability. The third OGP principle refers to the implementation of high professional integrity standards in the public administration, through approval of anticorruption policies and mechanisms that would ensure the transparency of public finances, of public procurements as well as of the revenues of high rank public servants.

The principle of public authorities and public servants accountability was included in several specific sub-actions of the OGAP. These refer to stimulating and increasing the efficiency of the public consultation process, by publishing online the consulted documents, periodic CPAA reporting, publishing data on foreign assistance received, publishing CPAA budgetary data, declarations on incomes and properties of CPAA leadership (this legal requirement was monitored as part of the sub-action 1.1), and the launching of the electronic procurements.

Among the most important accomplishments related to this principle are the launching of the e-procurements system already mentioned, disclosure of data on external assistance and the stimulation of the public consultation process. In the same time, some activities that are related to this principle have been partially completed, such as the legal requirement to publish declarations of income and properties of the public authority management. Most of the times only a minister declaration is published, while the respective declarations of the vice-ministers’ missing or being outdated.

Technologies and innovations. Finally the fourth OGP principle refers to the wide use of new information technologies and of the opportunities they can offer: efficient information sharing, public participation and collaboration. The use of new information technologies in the activity of the state institutions but also for interacting with citizens allows the development of efficient platforms for public services delivery and citizen involvement.

This principle is reflected in several OGAP activities, such as those referring to the adjustment of the legal framework on electronic petitioning, development of the legal framework regarding reuse of public sector information, opening of governmental data, the obligatory use of official email by the public servants.

Among the accomplishments related to this principle are, the adoption of the Guidelines on the use of social networks in the CPAA activity, publication of content on www.actelocale.md, digitization of some public services, development of regulations on the reuse of public sector information, opening of governmental data. As it was found during the interviews, some information technologies are used by the public servants (mostly younger ones) without a specific official order in this regard. Examples in this regard are the use of

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“Skype” for intra-institutional communication or the use of “Google Docs” for collaboration on documents. In the same time however, there were cases when public servants were not ready to provide an official email address, instead recommending the use of fax for communicating with them.

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