Freedom of Information Center of Armenia.

FOICA Sub-grant project outlines problems in E-Justice platforms

In order to make citizens' communication with state institutions easier and more transparent, Freedom of Information Center and Center of Democracy and Law NGOs are implementing "The monitoring of services providing by e-justice platforms and public service delivery offices" sub-grant project, which is co-funded by the European Union.

The goal of the project is to study and monitor e-request and e-draft electronic platforms and public service delivery offices as well as to identify problems and propose solutions.

Through monitoring the project identified issues arising from e-request and e-draft platforms, public service delivery offices and submitted them to the Ministry of Justice.
"This is very important for us because from a perspective of a user you can never predict certain problems. Within this project we were able to closely monitor the e-request platform. The NGO also presented issues related to e-draft and a number of other platforms", says Anna Vardapetyan, deputy minister of Justice. In her words, the project eliminated the potential inconveniences of using e-justice platforms.

"Digital electronic signatures seem to be an additional financial burden for citizens who do not have digital signatures, so legislation needs to be reviewed so that we do not require electronic signatures during inquiries", she says.
The inconveniences of using the services of the operators performing the functions of service offices of state authorities have also been eliminated. Project officials have had various meetings with representatives of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Armenia, as well as legislative amendments that will make the use of electronic platforms more effective.

"The purpose is to remove two specific conditions that are considered redundant from the survey's requirements. one relates to the citizenship claim (now every applicant has to submit his / her citizenship when making a request), the other is the signature requirement, as it does not really solve any problem, people request open, public information. This data could have appeared on the website of the organization in any way, that is, it is open information and contain no danger or confidential data" says Shushan Doydoyan, president of Freedom of Information Center.

Justice platforms simplify citizens' relationship with the state and make their participation more effective. It is no longer take much time consuming to send a request, petition or complaint to the state authorities via e-request, and the e-draft facilitates conduct of public discussions.

Here is the video about the project.