#15 - JRL 8310 - JRL Home
Moscow Times
August 2, 2004
State Will Tell What It Is Doing for a Fee
By Francesca Mereu
Staff Writer

Soon Russian citizens will be granted access for the first time to information about the government's work ­ but they will have to pay for it, according to legislation drawn up by the Economic Development and Trade Ministry.

Citizens will have to pay to get "information about the activities of government bodies and local administrations" and the officials who work in these and other state organizations, according to the 32-page bill, submitted to the government Thursday and posted on the ministry's web site.

"This is something new for Russia," an official at the ministry said on condition of anonymity Friday. "In Russian law, there is no law on how citizens can use their right of access to information from government bodies."

Although Article 24 of the Constitution guarantees citizens' rights of access to information, no law currently regulates relations between citizens and government bodies.

The only general rules governing how citizens can get access to information date from 1968, in a resolution passed by the U.S.S.R.'s Supreme Soviet. But these are confusing and allow bureaucrats the right to deny people information on government bodies.

The bill does not explain to what kind of information citizens will have the right. The Economic Development and Trade Ministry said Friday that a news conference Tuesday will give "explanations about the issue."

The bill does say citizens will be denied access to secret and confidential information. And while clearly stating that citizens will have to pay for information, it fails to shed any light on how much the fee for the service, including the duplication and delivery of information, will be.

Information provided orally will be at no cost.

Citizens will also have free access to information about the structure of government departments, officials' biographies and what information government bodies require for various applications.

Journalists, the bill says, will have free access to all information.

The government will set the fee for information given by federal agencies, while local administrations will decide their own fees. The bill envisions fines of up to 3,000 rubles ($100) for officials who give false information.

Vladimir Pribylovsky, head of the Panorama think tank, said the country needed a law to regulate access to information but expressed skepticism about how the law would be applied.

"If government bodies do not want to give you information, they can make such a high fee that citizens do not want to get that information anymore," Pribylovsky said. "Nothing will really change."

Dmitry Orlov, a political analyst at the Agency for Political and Economic Communications, said that while the law would violate the constitutional right of free access to information, "only the active part of the population, like businessmen or lobbyists, usually want to get specific information, not the average citizen."

"With this law the government wants to work only with active citizens and deny access to information to others who do not really need it. I don't think the fee will be too high," Orlov said.