On July 16, the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) launched an e-register of political parties’ reports POLITDATA. During the next months, the e-register will function in a test mode.
It will be brought into full-scale operation after Ukrainian political parties will receive the appropriate training from NACP and an understanding of the new reporting rules. According to the preliminary estimations, this should not take more than two months.
The development of the e-register would not be possible without the support of NACP’s international partners – International Foundation for Electoral Systems and USAID Support to Anti-Corruption Champion Institutions (SACCI) project. As the state budget for 2020 did not provide funds for the development of this register, it was fully funded by donors.
HOW DOES IT BENEFIT THE POLITICAL PARTIES’ DEVELOPMENT?
Since 2016, Ukrainian political parties should submit their reports once every three months to NACP.
A party should send the documents to the NACP in paper and electronic form (on a flash drive or CD). The reports of the biggest Ukrainian parties can take dozens of paper boxes. Thus, the reporting process is associated with additional costs and unjustified bureaucracy.
The e-register will help parties to save time and money while concentrating on their internal development and not the cost of postal services.
The e-register will also inform the party if the filled data is submitted correctly (e.g. the sum total is written write). This will help to reduce the number of minor violations NACP has previously dealt with.
HOW DOES IT BENEFIT UKRAINIAN CITIZENS?
The reports of political parties have been available publicly on the NACP website in PDF format that makes it hard for ensuring quality analysis.
The e-register will not only make this data easier to analyze, but also provide the interactive analytical modules so every citizen could receive information on political parties’ transparency before they vote on elections. Ensuring easy access to this data this year is especially important as the local elections will take place on October 25.
NACP also plans to integrate the data on the analysis of political parties reports to the system.
While since the beginning of the years NACP filled 175 administrative offense reports on political parties’ violations, the e-register will allow NACP to make its work even more efficient. NAPC staff will be able to spend more time identifying substantial violations in political parties’ reports rather than doing bureaucratic paperwork.
OTHER NEWS ON INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION
NACP representatives participate in EU-CoE seminar on verification of declarations
On June 25-26, the European Union (EU) and Council of Europe (CoE) organized “Red Flags: How to select declarations for verification” workshop for the representatives of selected regulatory bodies of the EU, the Eastern Partnership countries and the Western Balkans.
During the event, NACP representatives shared the experience of using red flags for selecting declarations for verification, development of the new Procedure for prioritization for verification of declarations, how NACP interacts with other authorities during the verification process, etc.
This information, along with the data provided by the other regulatory bodies, will be used for developing a regional technical document of the EU-CoE Regional Project for regulatory authorities to introduce or improve mechanisms for prioritizing declarations for verification.
