A meeting of the Commission on Access to Information was held

On January 28, a meeting of the Commission on Access to Information was held in Nur-Sultan under the chairmanship of the Minister of Information and Public Development Aida Balaeva. The meeting, which was held in a remote format, was attended by representatives of central state, local executive and representative bodies, non-governmental and other organizations. During the meeting, the novelties of legislation in the field of access to information were presented and explained. Recall that on December 30, 2020, the Head of State signed the Law "On Amendments and Additions to Certain Legislative Acts of the Republic of Kazakhstan on Information Issues", which includes a number of amendments to the Law "On Access to Information". “The Ministry of Information and Social Development, as an authorized body in the field of access to information, will strengthen the ongoing work on monitoring the fulfillment of the requirements of the Law by state bodies,” Aida Balaeva stressed. Bolat Tlepov, Vice Minister of Information and Public Development, focused on two issues in his report. This is the determination in each state body of an authorized person or subdivision on access to information, as well as annually submitting a report to the Head of State on the state of the sphere of access to information. It was noted that the Ministry will carry out extensive information and explanatory work and organize seminars for responsible employees of government agencies. The next issue was the openness of the activity of maslikhats. The Ministry of Information and Social Development analyzed the sites of maslikhats of regions, years. Nur-Sultan, Almaty and Shymkent. The results showed serious shortcomings and omissions in the work with the site. So until now, the maslikhat of the Atyrau region does not have its own Internet resource, the maslikhats of the Aktobe, Zhambyl, West Kazakhstan and Kostanay regions do not timely update the information on the site, 9 maslikhats do not have records of online broadcasts. In the context of a pandemic and social distancing, when the Internet has become the main source of information, it is extremely important to timely update information on the websites of government agencies. Anar Baytukenova, a representative of the Ministry of National Economy, reported on the work being done to introduce mandatory online broadcasting of meetings of maslikhats at all levels. “By January 2022, online broadcasts of the meetings are planned to be introduced in all maslikhats,” said a representative of the Ministry of National Economy. Note that this work is carried out within the framework of paragraph 142 of the National Action Plan for the implementation of the President's Address. Following the meeting, the Commission developed a number of recommendations to state bodies aimed at implementing the amendments to the Law "On Access to Information", as well as increasing the transparency of the activities of maslikhats.