By: Sara Bertoncelj / Nova24tv
Whether they are public or not is the question now. Information Commissioner Mojca Prelesnik stated that the Government of the Republic of Slovenia has a legal basis for the processing of personal data of civil servants and that this is freely available information of a public nature. On the other hand, the government says that it will not provide “cull lists” to the media or the public, saying that they are of the opinion that they should hide this information from the public. They will inform the public only selectively, only about what they think is appropriate. Can they even afford this kind of behaviour? In some other times for sure. Whether the government of Robert Golob will insist on its own after the intervention of the information commissioner remains to be seen.
Last week, ministries had to send the government lists of jobs and transfers for the past two and a half years. In addition to the names, the lists had to contain information on titles, salary grades, and type of employment. The Prime Minister, Robert Golob, was therefore interested in whether the person was employed for an indefinite or definite period or on trust and for the term of office of the Minister. “For all new employees for an indefinite period, it should be specifically indicated whether there was an employment relationship before the employment itself, and the legal basis of the previous relationship,” the government ordered at its first regular session. This request, of course, raised quite a bit of dust, which the information commissioner Mojca Prelesnik tried to calm down. The latter asserted that the said data were information of a public nature and therefore their collection was not disputed.
“The government has no jurisdiction under the Civil Servants Act and the Employment Relations Act. This is the competence of either an individual administrative body and its head, who can of course be influenced by the government, or it is the competence of the administrative inspection in case of established irregularities,” said professor of political science Dr Miro Haček, and he was not the only one who did not agree with the compilation of such lists. Former Minister of Public Administration and Interior Gregor Virant was appalled, saying that these lists had a sinister overtone of revanchism and mark a bad start for the work of the new government.