Only 3 of 59 VRU committees publish more than 50% of public information in internet. Despite VRU committees publish more and more public information in on-line sources, the openness of 6 of them has decreased over the last quarter. This fact was discovered by OPORA after the assessment of 29 official websites and their content.
Representatives of the organization have checked whether the content of portals corresponds to legislative requirements, and compared October results with July's. According to Ukrainian legislation, government authorities shall report on their activities, and poor coverage is a violation of legislative requirements.
During the last quarter, 15 of 29 committees published 7% more information of social importance which concerns their activities. This information mostly concerned the announcement of events and agendas of meetings. The Committee on Informatization and Information Technologies has created an official website, what is a huge step towards transparency. However, the resource still contains little information. Sites of the Committee on Science and Education and the Committee on construction, city planning, housing service and regional politics are being filled in with content on the same level – 38.7% and 22.6% correspondingly.
Sites of the following committees are casually updated: Committee on Fuel and Energy Complex, Nuclear Policy and Nuclear Safety; Committee on Freedom of Speech and Information; Committee on European Integration; Committee on Rules of Parliamentary Procedure, Ethics and Support to Work of The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine; Committee on Family Matters, Youth Policy, Sports and Tourism; and Committee on Judicial Policy.
6 parliamentary committees don't have official portals at all, and publish little information in interned. These committees are: the Committee on Economic Policy, Committee on Health Care; Committee on Social Policy and Labour; Committee on Transport and Communications; Committee on Finance and Banking; and Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Despite 1.5 million UAH was spent on the minutes of committees' meetings in 2012, most of the committees ignore the law and don't publish them.
In order to facilitate the transparency of committees, OPORA has showed MPs possible ways to overcome the problem of limited public information available on the corresponding sites. A special attention was paid to law-making activities of MPs. In order to qualitatively assess such activities, we should have information about: the list of bills, which shall be elaborated by a committee, and draft initiatives, to which a committee shall submit propositions; division of draft laws among sub committees; dates and stages of documents' consideration; list and content of recommendations, expert opinions and decisions on them. However, such information is absent on the majority of websites. There is also little information about current activities of committees.
Despite 1.5 million UAH was spent on the minutes of committees' meetings in 2012, most of the committees ignore the law and don't publish them.
