Boteva & Kantutis Law Office – NEWSLETTER NOVEMBER 2016

Crucial amendments in the Access to Public Information Act

Significant amendments, referring to the re-use of public sector information, were introduced in the Access to Public Information Act. The Law transposes an EU Directive in the field of re-use of information – Directive 2013/37/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Directive 2003/98/EC on the re-use of public sector information.

The amended Act was promulgated in the State Gazette In mid-December 2015. Considering some technical challenges, related to the dissemination of information, the amendments in the Law entered in force gradually by the end of October 2016.

The amendments aim, firstly, to expand the scope of the Law and therefore they include libraries, museums and archives in the list of public sector bodies obliged to grant such access. Secondly the Law establishes that the administration can charge at maximum the marginal cost for reproduction, provision and dissemination of the information. In exceptional cases, full cost recovery (plus a reasonable return on investment) will remain possible. Related to that, the Law obliges public sector bodies to be more transparent about these charging rules. And lastly, the amendments in the Access to Public Information Act encourage the availability of data in open machine-readable formats and the usage of open data portals.

The Access to Public Information Act is a typical framework act where a number of formalities and regulatory decisions have been left to be detailed in secondary normative acts such as the Regulations on the Implementation of the Law. They should include the taxation details and the licences for re-use of public sector information.

These amendments in the Access to Public Information Act create a genuine right to re-use public information, not present in the Bulgarian legislation until 2016. Once fully implemented into national law, the revision of the 2003 Public Sector Information Directive makes all generally accessible (that is, non-personal) public sector information available for re-use. What is important for businesses, developers, programmers, and citizens is that they are able to get and re-use public sector data at zero or very low cost in most cases. They also have access to more content, for example including materials in national museums, libraries and archives.