Transparency International – Georgia and Human Rights Education and Monitoring Center (EMC) presented a joint report “Transparency of the Ministry of Internal Affairs”. The report aims at defining the level of transparency of the Ministry and the reasons hindering it, as well as, increasing the accessibility to the information in the system of the Georgian police and providing an analysis of the structure and system of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, following the reforms of 2015.
Key Findings
Accessibility of public information
The analysis of accessibility of public information at the Ministry of Internal Affairs has revealed that the Ministry has not left a single Freedom of Information (FOI) request without a reply. In most of the cases, the issued information was considered as complete.
However, the issuing of public information on time, as defined by law, has been identified as a significant problem. The information provided by the Ministry has in some cases been assessed as incomplete. The classification of documents as state secrets limits the accessibility of public information. The Ministry does not fully fulfill its obligation of proactive publishing of public information.
Forms of producing statistics at the Ministry of Internal Affairs
The Ministry of Internal Affairs does not have a single and consolidated guideline document for the production of statistical information. Statistical-analytical research is conducted chaotically and it is unknown what purposes or aims it serves. Little attention is paid to the sociological polls on the perception of substance and indicators of crimes, as well as broken down information on sensitive issues.
In spite of rising public interest, the Ministry has not published information on the crime statistics since February 15th of 2016.
Forms of producing statistics and managing databases
The retention period of information is not regulated for several different categories of data; moreover, the necessity of indefinite archiving of several categories of data is unclear. The secondary legislation does not clearly define the different regimes for access to archived information; there are insufficient legislative guarantees for the prevention of abuse of access to the databases.
Personnel Policy
The regulative statues of the staffing policy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs are vague and are not spelled out clearly on the legislative level. In addition, the mechanisms of external oversight over the police activities are limited. The Minister enjoys broad powers to make decisions on staff issues unilaterally.
The report was prepared with the financial support of the Open Society Georgia Foundation. The views, opinions and statements expressed by the authors are theirs only and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Foundation. Therefore, the Open Society Georgia Foundation is not responsible for the content of the report.