The new Government seems to be serious in its promise to bring transparency into the work of public institutions. This is certainly praiseworthy. For years, ruling parties sought to shield the public from government business, explaining that things were more complicated than they seemed and throwing in the words "classified"  and "national security" every time someone dared ask about anything.

Now the new Government has decided  –  with just one click of the button – to make all decisions and orders taken by all governments after 1990 available to the public online, free of charge.

At the moment this may seem completely irrelevant for those who have lost their jobs because of the crisis, or who are about to do so, but it is certainly a big step forward in the way public administration in Bulgaria works. This move will be invaluable for contemporary historians and researchers who now will be able to uncover the reasons and thinking behind certain decisions.

Until now, all that the media, i.e. the public, was told was bits and pieces from governmental decisions. Many of theses decisions were never disclosed to the public because they were not published in the State Gazette. Now everything has been put on display and the search engine works impressively well.  

Making all these documents available to the public, also works well for the content of the State Gazette. After years of campaigning by NGOs, the previous government finally decided to make the content of the State Gazette available online. Unfortunately, the public will only have access to issues published after July 2005.

For anything published before this date, people have to pay private search engines, which, in the view of some people, explains why all issues of the State Gazette were not made live. Why else would the remaining copies of the State Gazette be kept away from the public eye? If it is just because of organisational reasons, then this could easily be overcome as it only requires scanning and uploading several hundred issues which can be done over several months.

After all, other than publishing the issue, the State Gazette team has little else to do anyway. Hopefully, the new Government will find time and resources to do that as it would benefit everyone.    

Making Council of Ministers’ acts available to the public is some solution to the problem as most of them have been published in the State Gazette, but there is more to be done in order for Bulgarians to know more about the operations of their public administration.

1. http://pris.government.bg
2. http://dv.parliament.bg