Access to information

Law on Freedom of Access to Information (LFAI)

What is Law on Freedom of Access to Information?

Law on Freedom of Access to Information (LFAI) in RS (Official Gazette of RS, 20/01) – establishes the general right of public to access information controlled by public authorities “to the extent possible in accordance with the public interest”.

Public access to information kept by public authorities has three important goals:

To encourage openness and responsibility of public authorities in decision making;
To improve democracy through promotion of public involvement in decisions made by public authorities;
To contribute the fight against corruption and bad management.

Access to information procedure

The right to access information can be exercised by submission of a written application, which has to meet the following requirements:

It has to be written in one of the official languages used in the Republic of Srpska;
It has to have sufficient information related to the nature and content of required information, so that the information is found easily;
It has to contain name and surname of the applicant, address, and a phone number if possible;
The manner in which the applicant wants to access the information has to be stated.

Access to information is provided in the following ways:

Accessing to the original information for a personal inspection;
Photocopying the information and personal collection or delivery to the home address (the first ten photocopied pages are free of charge; if the photocopy of the information contains less than the ten free pages, it is delivered by mail, to the home address of the applicant).

Which information is exempt from publishing?

LFAI allows the public authorities to request an exemption from publishing information in three cases:

If publishing the information might reasonably be expected to cause significant harm to legitimate functions of the government (e.g. national security, defense, prevention of crime or public security);
If publishing the information might harm the confidential commercial interests of third parties;
If the requested information includes personal interests related to third parties’ privacy.

Fees for application submission

There are no fees or charges for submitted applications, decisions or notices. The only fees that the City can charge are the costs of multiplication of information.

If a multiplication of information is requested, the first 10 (ten) photocopied pages of standard size are FREE OF CHARGE, but the price of photocopying additional standard size pages is BAM 0.20 per page.

The payment for multiplication of information is done to the bank account number:
555-001-00002959-16.

The City of Bijeljina is obliged to make a decision on a submitted request for access to information within 15 (fifteen) days.