HY RU EN
Asset 3

Loading

End of content No more pages to load

Your search did not match any articles

Sara Petrosyan

What do Armenia's Official Websites Offer?

Journalists' hopes of at last gaining access to official information, regardless of the status of their media outlet, when state institutions set up Websites, have not been realized. As it turns out, for our state agencies, Websites, like press services, are just more window-dressing, where no information-seeker, let alone reporter, will find anything at all. Official websites are, for the most part, not functional; they are not updated, and even homepages lack basic necessary information.

The Civil Society Development Union (CSDU) has researched a number of official Websites, including those of the President, the National Assembly, the Government, the Central Electoral Commission, and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the Constitutional Court, etc. Their recently presented findings show that on official Websites only information on official meetings, receptions and visits of the highest ranking official of the institution is updated-- in short, information which might increase popularity.

Nothing can be found regarding the activity, programs, figures, or actual performance of the agency in question. And if any data has been placed on the Web, it is at least two years old. Thus, reporters from the regional mass media have to go to Yerevan for any fact or data, where again their need for information might not be met.

www.president.am

The president's Web pages have been considered the best among the official Websites of state agencies. "They are permanently updated, they do not contain irrelevant information, although one cannot find presidential decrees there". We would add that the activity of departments and divisions of the president's administration are not represented, and no information is available about what they do and what issues they concern themselves with. Thus, those who seek factual information on a specific field of the administration's activity simply will not find it. Not just journalists, but the public at large are extremely interested in the work of several departments of the administration to which citizens appeal the most, for example, the presidential inspection service, or the Council of Justice.

Placing information on the Website would not require any additional expenditure of time as, for example, the Council of Justice is expected to prepare for the president a concise quarterly report based on proposals and complaints received from citizens concerning the work of court and prosecution offices. This could be put on the Website and into the public domain without any expense. In addition, Article 11 of the Law on the Procedure of Consideration of the Proposals, Appeals and Complains of the Citizens of Armenia requires that information on the responses to citizens proposals, appeals and complaints be published in the mass media at least every three months.

www.parliament.am

From the point of view of outdated information, the best example is the Website of the National Assembly, where laws invalidated long ago are presented as laws currently in force. In 2001 Parliament passed a new law on NGOs, yet the National Assembly continues to offer as valid the Law on NGOs adopted in 1996. The same applies to the Law on the Procedure of Consideration of the Citizens' Proposals, Appeals and Complaints. The National Assembly passed the new law in 1999, but the Website features the version the law edited in 1990. Even so, the Website contains the warning: "These Web pages are the official presentation of the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia. All other presentations and references to those presentations are considered unlawful".

The CSDU study observes that the legislation presented on the site was placed there mainly in 1998, but this does not mean that the Website is not operative. What is more, it was noted that this is the sole Website among those of the state institutions that is, to a certain extent, updated, but only concerning the official visits and meetings of the Speaker of the National Assembly.

www.concourt.am

The Website of the Constitutional Court offers nothing about the judicial system of Armenia other than the judgments and decisions passed by the court itself. And what it does offer is presented in a typescript as yet unknown to the visitor, perhaps to all mankind. The study also discovered in the Constitutional Court Website an extraordinarily blameless method of presenting information. Behold, the entire content of the Website consists of references to the Web pages of the President, the National Assembly, and the Government, which from the point of view of information, are in no better condition. As a result, one Website's mistakes are put into circulation by another. The CSDU has noticed that the Human Rights section of the Constitutional Court's Website openly proceeds to the Website of a Human Rights NGO. It is impossible for the visitor to comprehend how the Constitutional Court has taken upon itself the presentation of the opinions of an NGO. The pages entitled "Comprehensive International Treaties signed by the Republic of Armenia" contain just three agreements, all concerning military matters.

www.armenian.judiciary.am

The Council of the Chairmen of Courts recently inaugurated its Website, but the public's expectations, based on promises made in the announcement of the site, that they would at last have access to valuable information on the activity of the courts, have not been realized. More than a month has passed since the opening ceremony and, as it turns out, the site is not receiving visitors yet.

www.gov.am

The Website of the Government contains no government decisions, but the Prime Minister, as it turns out, has two biographies. In the Armenian pages he is introduced to the visitor as a member of the Republican Party, and in the English pages as a non-party man. The list of government activities has not been updated since 2000, but the Prime Minister's last Address to the Nation found its place on the site in a timely fashion. CSDU findings show that the Government has no financial problems-it has at different times allocated sums of money for the design and maintenance of the Website. And what's more, the Website of the Government of Armenia contains advertising, which means that it is indeed not financing that is lacking for the maintenance of the pages, but the will.

www.elections.am

The Website of the Central Electoral Commission was created during the Parliamentary elections of 1999 and until today contains what was placed there four years ago. There is hope that the upcoming parliamentary elections will cause the site to be updated with one or two incoherent pieces of information.

www.armeniaforeignminstry.com

As far as inaccessibility of information, the Website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is unsurpassed. The absurdity starts with the URL address with "com" as the domain. According to specialists it is offered to businesses. The list of ambassadors here consists of those appointed by the former president, carrying the visitor back in time more than five years. One source testifies that their work with the Foreign Ministry was unsuccessful, even though their project was financed by the World Bank and was implemented with the consent and the assurances of support of the government. After months of negotiation, they could not manage to get the information they needed from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to put in the site called Armenia Gateway. The MFA is extremely stingy with purely official information, declining, as a rule, to provide it.

The Ministry of Communication has no Website at all, which is brilliant proof of our country's attitude toward information technology and the accessibility of information. Let us point out that currently Internet providers are even under the threat of shutting down because ArmenTel has decided to make final the complete information blockade of Armenia. In general it's clear that because the officials in question don't care about the transparency and accessibility of information, they attach no importance to placing information on the Website. Otherwise they would work with the same zeal as they do when it concerns themselves.

That official Websites do not function can be mainly explained by the fact that no importance is placed on making information accessible, rather than by financial problems or a lack of skilled professionals. As an example, the information domain of the legislature is operated by an entire working group. Placing the texts of adopted laws and other necessary information on the Website would require neither financial investment nor additional working hours.

The government of Armenia, which compiles and publishes official reference books, could place them on the Website without spending extra time, especially considering that these reference books are published in strictly limited numbers at a high cost, and are not available to the majority. They simply do not consider putting them on the Website to be their business.

At the same time, everyone understands that it is extremely difficult to familiarize oneself with even simple documents in a country where the dissemination of official information has become the private business of the officials, as in the case of the Irtek system. Since Irtek sells information, apparently state agencies have agreed not to publish information. Isn't it ridiculous that the government of Armenia needs to get Irtek's consent, and perhaps even to pay, in order to publish its own decisions in the Official Reference Book?

Sara Petrossyan

Write a comment

If you found a typo you can notify us by selecting the text area and pressing CTRL+Enter