Freedom of Information Center of Armenia.

Head of the Freedom of Information Center of Armenia Shushan Doydoyan stated, “I might say that a technically good working website: www.azdarar.am has been created. Now the only problem is to make it really serve its purpose, so that all the official notifications will be published on everyday bases.

The “Law on Online Public Notifications”, which was adopted in 2007, anticipated that all the notifications defined by Law must not only be printed in newspapers and disseminated via television, but also an official website was to be created for public notifications. Because of technical issues, including the incompleteness of the e-governance system, at that time the Law could not be implemented. As a result, for a long time the Law was left on papers. And only on 17 February, 2011, in order to comply with the requirements of the Law, the ARM Government passed N174-Ü decision about “Defining an electronic format for presenting the text of public announcements, and an order for receiving announcements subject to online public notification, passing them to the web administrator, publishing these announcements in the website, and archiving them.”

On 1 April the www.azdarar.am website was launched for public notifications. Head of the Freedom of Information Center of Armenia Shushan Doydoyan stated, “I might say that a technically good working website has been created. Now the only problem is to make it really serve its purpose, so that all the official notifications will be published on everyday bases.

And the task of journalists, NGOs and other citizens will be to watch the law implementation process. It is very important that the source will be one, and tenders and suchlike documents will appear in this website. It is also important that for publishing an announcement every citizen and legal entity, who has an e-signature, instead of turning to newspapers and spending money, can publish it here for free.”

In the www.azdarar.am website one can find, for example, reports from foundations, OJSCs, NGOs, or an announcement about a company’s liquidation, etc. The website also contains information about election outcomes, announcements of electoral commissions, information about state procurement processes, etc.

According to Chief of ARM Government Staff Davit Sargsyan’s evaluation, freedom of information is a vital necessity for every democratic society. In this regard the new website is a step forward for presenting official information in a more operative and systemized way. “Imagine a court case, where one side has to appropriately notify the other party about an argument. However, the second party is missing, which happens often. Then the text of that announcement can be published in azdarar.am, and by law it will be considered an appropriate notification.”

In the “Main Page” and “About Us” sections of the website one can find information about the website’s activities, application forms, and the last updates. In the “Announcements” section one can view official notifications, reports, vacancies, etc.

“Such information is subject to publication in this website, which, according to some law must be published in the press. For example, the “Law on Procurements” anticipates that information regarding procurements until 2013 must be published in the press. Thus, this same information must be accordingly published in azdarar.am. However, if I want to sell my house and want to publish this information, and it is not a requirement of a law, then this announcement, according to the current order, cannot be published in this website. Hence, those announcements are published, which are anticipated by law,” clarifies ARM Deputy Minister of Justice Aram Orbelyan. In order to publish an announcement one can print out the application form from the website, fill it out, then take the text of the announcement to the State Register Agency of Legal Entities of the Staff of the Ministry of Justice (49/3 Komitas, Yerevan, Armenia), and provincial residents can visit the regional centers of the State Register. And if you have an e-signature you can publish every announcement yourselves.

“Sections accept the announcements and pass them to the appropriate branches. Here the announcements is first checked, to avoid obvious falsifications, then they publish the announcement in the right section of the website, so that a procurement announcement does not appear next to the announcements about NGOs. This has two purposes. One is that when searching, people can find information easily. The second is to send correct announcements through subscription,” said Aram Orbelyan.

According to the government decision, the web administration must publish announcements within two business days. If that same announcement will appear in newspaper only for one day and in one newspaper, and it is also possible that you might not manage to buy the paper, then in azdarar.am the information stays for ever, and anytime one can easily find the information s/he wants. In order to find information fast and easily, you can search it by keywords or by date, as well as by the type of information and announcer.

In order to subscribe for website updates, you need to put your e-mail in the appropriate field, select at least one announcer and type of announcement, and click “Subscribe”. As an alternative, one can also use RSS. This way you can periodically receive e-mails containing information that you need and are interested in.

“For example, if you are planning to participate in procurement processes, you can subscribe for that section and every time when a new announcement appears in that section you will receive an e-mail notification. Or if you are conducting an NGO monitoring and you are interested in NGO reports. This allows being informed about news, changes or any other information that you might be interested in, without visiting the website every day,” stated Deputy Minister of Justice Aram Orbelyan.

Today, unlike press publications, this website is free. However, even if certain fees are anticipated, then, as the Ministry assures, that price will not exceed the fee charged by print media. Aram Orbelyan added, “We will periodically research to find out the website’s mechanisms that are useful and accessible for people, because it is possible that the website is very informative and good but people cannot use it. Our goal is to have a maximum simple but progressive website.”

The website was created and launched by “Helix Consulting” company. As stated head of the company Aram Mkhitaryan, when creating the website they took into consideration the international standards. “We find it important that when a citizen enters the website s/he faces absolutely no difficulties in finding his/her way through. We also considered the font size and the subsections. There is an internationally accepted standard – when you make more than a couple of steps and still don’t find the section you are looking for, then the website is incorrectly constructed.” Your complains, comments, suggestions, and points of view about the website can be sent to moderator@azdarar.am, or you can call 010 20 17 25.

Realizing the freedom of information and another not less important law requirement – maximum easy information publication implementation – today Chief of the ARM Government Staff Davit Sargsyan thinks that the best option is the Internet. “Two years ago the number of Internet users increased dramatically in Armenia. According to our studies annually about 200.000 people visit official websites. It is important that we be effective before the citizen demands that from us. We should always be one step ahead,” concluded Davit Sargsyan.

 
By` Diana Karapetyan