The SP also requests that ministers’ digital communications be archived. SP constitution spokesman and committee chairman Jrg Leichtfried criticized the government’s humility in advance. “We have been waiting for the freedom of information law promised by the VP-Green government for 1.5 years. It is overdue. Austria is at the bottom of the list in Europe when it comes to questions of state transparency,” Leichtfried told the APA. The SP therefore put the law on freedom of information in the Constitutional Committee on November 4th. “Constitutional Minister Karoline Edstadler will then have the opportunity to inform parliament about the status of the negotiations,” said Leichtfried.
SP application for freedom of information law
The SP will also submit an application for a law on freedom of information, on which the SP and VP agreed with the federal states in 2016 – “which ultimately failed because of the VP,” as Leichtfried recalls. Parallel to the expansion of information rights for citizens, the question and control rights of the MPs should also be strengthened, demands the SP.
The right of parliamentarians to make inquiries is also to be extended to outsourced companies. The company should be obliged to provide information directly through its board of directors. The deadline for answering parliamentary questions is to be reduced from 8 to 4 weeks. The aim is to create the possibility that responses to queries can be examined by the Constitutional Court. So in gross cases the Constitutional Court should check whether a parliamentary question from the National Council has been properly answered by the minister. So that the VfGH is not overloaded with audit requests, this option should be limited to one audit request per year and per member of parliament.
Obligation to archive digital communications
Another application by the SP in the upcoming constitutional committee concerns the Federal Archives Act. The SP wants a “modernization of the outdated archive law,” says Leichtfried. It should be supplemented by clear rules for archiving modern digital communication. “The highest organs – including members of the government – should be obliged to archive their digital communication,” said Leichtfried.
Source From: Nachrichten
