I have the right to know! - Report on transparency of local selfgovernments on example of capital city Podgorica, Kotor and Pljevlja
I have the right to know! - Report on transparency of local selfgovernments on example of capital city Podgorica, Kotor and Pljevlja

Author(s): Mira Popović
Contributor(s): Daliborka Uljarević (Editor)
Subject(s): Politics, Governance, Government/Political systems, Corruption - Transparency - Anti-Corruption
Published by: Centar za građansko obrazovanje (CGO)
Keywords: Montenegro; governance; local self-government; Kotor; Podgorica; Pljevlja; transparency;
Summary/Abstract: The right of citizens of Montenegro to information of public importance is guaranteed by legal framework. However, in practice, local self-governments still do not show sufficient level of responsibility and transparency in work. This results in often unnecessary complication of citizens’ lives during their efforts to solve numerous current and existential issues, but also hinders overall reform processes and calls into question their legitimacy. Local self-governments still have numerous deficiencies in the part of access to information of importance for citizens, which brings them into a bureaucratized labyrinth, that takes away important time and other resources from parties and bodies of public administration. Considering benefit and awareness of citizens, both those who were or will be parties in proceedings before bodies of state administration or local self-government, it is necessary that work of local self-governments is rendered more transparent which includes also far faster and better availability of data and documents prescribed by laws on municipalities’ webpages. Reform processes in Montenegro, unfortunately, do not progress in a desired pace, hence, even in this area, we identify numerous deficiencies in fulfilment of obligations of local self-governments, especially in the part of transparency of work that is at the same time also one of efficient manners of prevention but also fight of corruption. Numerous reports of international actors and civic sector in Montenegro indicate that even the system established by the Law on Free Access to Information is insufficiently defined in part of monitoring and enacting supervision over respect of the same, and passivity of local self-governments to implement this Law, especially to proactively post information on their work on official Internet pages is also aggravating. Report on transparency of local self-governments, with the focus on municipalities of Kotor, Pljevlja and Podgorica, was created within the framework of project ‘I have the right to know – responsible municipalities in the service of citizens’ that is financed from funds of the European Union and Kingdom of Netherlands through regional project WeBER.

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