In court, the lawyers of CEDEM will pursue a lawsuit against the State Service for Special Communications and Information Protection of Ukraine, which refused to provide information upon request.

The aforementioned request requested to provide the public information, namely: Expert opinion on the compliance of the integrated information security system of the Unified State Register of Declarations of persons authorized to perform state or local government functions, requirements of the regulatory documents of the system of technical protection of information, with all appendices thereto.

Let’s recall that in August 2016, the public shook the refusal of the State Service for Special Communications and Information Protection of Ukraine to certify the collection and processing of electronic declarations. The decision of the body was based on an expert opinion, which was asked to provide the questioner.

However, the information manager refused to provide the document and noted that the findings of the examination were the property of the customer of the expert examination and recommended the requestor to request the customer – the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption.

Such a response does not meet the requirements of Article 22 of the Law of Ukraine ‘On Access to Public Information’, which establishes an exclusive list of grounds from which the information manager may refuse to provide it. Among the reasons stated in Article 22 there is no basis as ‘the affiliation of the requested document to another person’. So, in this case, the dismissal of the manager is unlawful.

At present, the court has already opened the proceedings in the administrative case. The case is underway.