The information will be published frequently following the requirement of the Government Unit for Freedom of Information • Among the publications: State agreements with other countries and minutes of meetings of the Natural Gas Council

• Ministry of Justice, in 2017 // Archive photo: Oren Ben Hakon

Following the Government Freedom of Information Unit's requirement in the Ministry of Justice, the various government ministries will disclose information to the public, including minutes of natural gas council meetings, agreements between the State of Israel and other countries and a reflection of rabbinical election process.

The novelty is that as part of the freedom of information requests, government ministries will publish the information on their own initiative and without being required to do so. As part of the demand, government ministries were asked to submit to the unit a plan for disseminating information proactively in order to locate issues of public interest and to lead to information on these issues being published frequently. At this stage, these are offices whose scope of information requests they receive each year is small-medium.

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Following a directive from the Ministry of Justice, several government ministries have already forwarded the plan to proactive publications. Thus, the Ministry of Energy has announced that it will regularly publish minutes of the Natural Gas Council, appointed by the government under the Natural Gas Economy Act. The council advises the Minister of Energy and the director of the Natural Gas Authority, sets standards for service and approves rates for the transmission and distribution of natural gas to consumers. According to the plan, the protocols will be published frequently on the ministry's website.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs also joins the initiative, announcing that it will publish on its website a database of agreements between the State of Israel and other countries, agreements that have been requested more than once under the Freedom of Information Law and that arouse much public interest.

The Ministry of Culture and Sports has announced that it will regularly publish the minutes of meetings of public councils active within the framework of the Israeli Council for Culture and the Arts, the Council for the Review of Films and more. The Competition Authority, formerly known as the Antitrust Authority, will publish the diary of the Competition Commissioner.

The Ministry of Social Equality will publish a flight report of the ministry's employees, and the rabbinical courts will distribute an interactive statistical report on issues in the field, including reflecting the process of electing rabbis and other issues.

In order for government ministries to publish significant information, the unit has defined a number of criteria in the initiated publications: first - the information will serve the public interest in maintaining supervision and control over the authority; Second - the program will address concrete information and define a concrete work process and time limits for its publication; Third, the plan will reflect a long-term and permanent commitment to uploading the information; Fourth - the plan will not address information that has a separate obligation to publish by law; Fifth, the plan will not address an advertising routine that already exists in the PA.

Shlomi Bilevsky, acting head of the government unit for freedom of information, responded: "A strategy of proactive information publishing reflects an advanced approach to the values ​​of transparency. It allows the Authority to publish information in a controlled, uniform and systematic manner, according to a clear and pre-determined procedure, and in a manner that allows access to the general public and not just the applicant. "It has been proven that the adoption of this strategy reduces the number of applications submitted on the subject in respect of which the publication is made, improves the internal work process in the Authority, which involves preparing the information for publication, reduces irrelevant criticism of the Authority and positions the Authority as transparent and advanced."