Information Law So Far Without a Flood of Requests for Municipalities
The first four weeks with the new Freedom of Information Act have been "relatively quiet," according to the Association of Municipalities, as a spokesperson told APA. There are few inquiries and hardly any excitement, it was said. The interest in everyday proceedings in municipal councils is limited.
Flood of Inquiries Absent According to Association of Municipalities
In individual municipalities, specific inquiries have been received, but this is due to current special topics. There have been "no negative feedback" regarding the proactive publication of information. The affected locations with more than 5,000 residents have prepared well and published many data even before September 1st. Examples of this can be found in the information register data.gv.at.
Those affected by the freedom of information include, among others, administrative bodies of the federal, state, and municipal governments, as well as agencies entrusted with administration. They must respond "without unnecessary delay," but no later than four weeks after the inquiry is submitted. The deadline can be extended to eight weeks under certain circumstances.
NGO Criticizes Long Waiting Times
With the portal FragDenStaat.at of the Forum for Freedom of Information, inquiries can be made and responses published upon request. In September, there were 223 inquiries through it, board member Markus Hametner told APA on Friday. According to him, 148 of these inquiries have not yet received a response. Also, 61 of the 90 inquiries from the first week of September are still awaiting a reply.
"The fact that many offices apparently lean back on the four-week deadline instead of taking the obligation to respond 'without unnecessary delay' seriously is disappointing in light of the political promises of a paradigm shift," said Hametner. He himself received six responses three weeks after his first series of inquiries to all ministries - which concerned the guidelines for responding to inquiries - while seven are still pending. The first substantive response came from the Ministry of Finance on the first day.
However, Hametner criticized that large authorities do not allow inquiries via email. For example, if one tries to make an inquiry to the Ministry of Justice in this way, one receives the message that there will be no response due to the transmission via email. "This is massively unfriendly to citizens and really hard to understand," said Hametner.
(APA/Red)
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