Action Plans

Other actors involved

Other state actors involved

Government bodies

Civil society, private sector

Hetq (upon consent)

Transparency International NGO (upon consent)

Issue subject to regulation

Since 2012, the declarations on the property, income, and affiliated persons of high-ranking officials have been published in PDF format in accordance with the requirements of Decision of the Government of the Republic of Armenia No 1835-N of 15 December 2011. In 2015, the Commission set up a system of reports in the electronic system of declarations, which enables to receive information on persons having failed to submit declarations within the specified time limit, as well as persons having submitted declarations late. It is not connected to the website of the Commission at www.ethics.am yet, and users have no access to it. As a result, the operating system enables users to retrieve data, though in an incomplete form (the operating system does not enable to retrieve the lists), on declarants having failed to submit declarations within the time limits specified by the Law of the Republic of Armenia "On public service", or declarants having submitted declarations late.

Moreover, in the "Registry of Declarations" section of the website of the Commission at www.ethics.am, the search for declarations is carried out based on the following search characteristics of the official — "Name, Surname", "Position" and "Year". There are problems with not only ensuring the availability and accessibility of data on declarations but also with further processing of such data. In terms of selecting declaration data required by specific characteristics, as well as receiving and analyzing the stream of data (dynamics) in separate years, the "Registry of Declarations" section is not available to users yet, particularly to investigative journalists and persons examining declaration data.

Main objective

The objective of the civil initiative is to make the data on declarants having failed to submit declarations within the time limits specified by law available and accessible for the civil society, as well as to enable to receive the data subject to the publication from the system interactively and in an open electronic format.

Brief description of commitment

Compliance of the format of declarations of high-ranking officials with the “public data” principle, improvement of the processing, analysis, and search system thereof.

OGP challenge addressed by the commitment

Enhancement of public integrity.

Relevance to OGP values

Publication of declarations of high-ranking officials based on the “public data” principle will contribute to the availability and accessibility of information, as well as will ensure a higher level of public accountability.

Ambition

It is expected to have, with the help of civil society, an impact on declarants to perform their duty of submitting declarations. This will improve the statistics on declarations that have not been submitted within the time limit specified by law and those submitted late. Moreover, by introducing the declarations registry interactive instrument, the Commission expects to receive from the interested groups of civil society more substantiated recommendations and applications in relation to cases of restrictions on the activities defined by the Law of the Republic of Armenia "On public service" or conflict of interests, or prima facie violations of rules of ethics on the part of any high-ranking official, or risks recorded in this regard.