Freedom of Information Center of Armenia.

In 2007, the National Assembly adopted the Law on Public Notices by Means of the Internet. According to the law, an official website for public notices was supposed to be created (www.lraber.am) to publish notices and announcements that are required to be published by law or other normative legal acts.

According to the law, the public notices website should be run and maintained by an entity that would win the tender in accordance with procedures defined in the RA Law on Public Procurement. The customer is the RA Minister of Justice.

The law was passed, the website address created, but the RA Ministry of Justice is in no rush to acquire the domain.  Eight months after the law is passed, www.lraber.am sub-domain is acquired by a person named V. Tonoyan, who has no connection with the RA Ministry of Justice. As a result, the enforcement of the law becomes impossible. To correct the situation, the National Assembly amended the Law on Public Notices by Means of the Internet in October 2008. According to the amendments, www.lraber.am was replaced by www.azdarar.am, while the running and the technical maintenance of the public notices website was given to the RA Government’s staff.

This time, the Ministry registered the www.azdarar.am sub-domain in its name before the law is amended. Six or seven months later, the law remains on paper. When we asked the RA Government’s staff about who runs and maintains the public notices website, we came across a very interesting situation. First, employees of the press service were genuinely surprised and said they did not know about the existence of such law and especially of the fact that the Government staff is supposed to be in charge of running the website. Then they recommended that we talk to the Chief of Staff. The RA Government’s Chief of Staff, D. Sargsyan, provided the following commentary on why the law is not being implemented by them: “the whole idea of the law is rendered meaningless, because we have no regional units.”

First, D. Sargsyan informed that the Government is currently discussing a new draft of amendments to the RA Law on Public Notices by Means of the Internet, according to which the running and the maintenance of the public notices website will be given to the state register of legal entities in the RA Ministry of Justice. It turns out, they passed a law and now they don’t know what to do about it: the government and the ministry keep passing to each other the responsibility for implementing the law, while the official website for public notices is still not working.