In Armenia, the Committee to Protect Freedom of Expression, supported by the Open Society Foundations – Armenia, for the first time monitored official governmental websites according to adapted methodology initially development by the IIFD. The monitoring results has called wide public interest and media response.

The research was aimed to define informational openness level for governmental bodies and to reveal whether current official governmental websites comply the public needs.

The monitoring was performed from August to December 2010. Forty governmental websites were divided into three groups: the first including 25 sites opf ministries and bodies subordinate to the Government, the second – 10 websites of 10 regions (joint by the unified Territorial Governance System network), and the third covering websites of the President, the National Assembly, the Government, the Constitutional Court, and the Prosecutor’s Office of Armenia.

All web resources were analyzed for 150 content-related and 27 technical parameters.

Group 1: Websites of Ministries and Government Subordinate Bodies

The leaders are: the Ministry for Transport and Communications (informational openness level 50.48%), the Ministry for Labor and Social Issues (44,65%), and the Ministry for Education and Science (41,67%).

The winner provides access to large volumes of information, but also places implicit advertisements, and information at its web portal is not easily found.

The runner-up could get higher rate, if provided more full information on lawmaking activities, state procurement and tenders, and state contracts settled.

The most “sensitive” information, which is quite difficult to get access to, is information on budget, finances, and state procurements. No surprise in this.

The outsiders are official websites of the Armenian Police, the Ministry for Justice, and the Committee for State Incomes.

Group 2: Regional Official Websites

Official websites of Armenian regions (“marz” is the Armenian for “region”) are joint by the unified network and have unified structure and design. But information volumes defining openness level are different, The leaders are websites of the Armavir Region (29,17%), the Syunik Region (28,34%), and the Tavush Region (26,31%). For the Ararat Region and the Lori region, it appeared impossible to open their websites.

Even for the leaders, openness rates are quite low. The websites provide just general news and information on region heads, their deputies, and competences.

Group 3: Unique and Specific Websites

Armenian authorities (like Russian) are most willing to place general information (on their structures, head staff, current news) and general contacts.

Information on budget implementation, reception schedule for citizens, or human resourcing if not published (except the website of the Prosecutor’s Office, it really stands out).

Olga Safaryan, lawyer of the Committee to Protect Freedom of Expression, says that of course the first monitoring has met large difficulties, but the positive response to it exceeds the negative one: some governmental officials are now consulting the Committee how to improve their websites. As for regional websites, she believes that current low rates are caused by difference of general development and life quality level in the capital and in regions, and points that regions have potential to be implemented and developed.

So, results are similar to initial monitoring results for Russia. In our country, situation appears to improve obviously after several years of monitoring activities. Armenian experts are – and intend – to make large efforts to improve governmental informational openness in their country.

Official report on the Monitoring (In Russian) is available at the Russian page.