Mohamed Abbou, Minister of Administrative Reform.

During RTCI’s “Café Noir” radio emission, the Minister of Administrative Reform Mohamed Abbou responded to Nadia Haddaoui Makhbout’s questions, as well as questions from 2 members of the OpenGovTN initiative (Jazem Haloui and Walid Neffati at the studio, and some questions that were posted on OpenGovTN’s Facebook page).

Below are the promises that Mohamed Abbou made in regards to the implementation of OpenGov in Tunisia:

1. We will apply law 41-2011, which concerns the right to access information.

2. We will publish the list of administrative services, the names of officials and their duties, as well as the names of those in charge of managing information and data in each administration.

3. We will launch an “OpenData” portal soon, within which all public data will be found.

4. A platform monitoring public markets, financed by South Korea, will be available online in a few months.

5. A survey will be issued in order to facilitate the implementation of law 41-2011 to access information.

6. When a document contains paragraphs with legally classified information, the rest of the document that is considered public will be published.

7. I suggest to interested citizens to participate in a commission that aims to evaluate the ATI.

8. We will publish the detailed budgets of all governmental agencies.

9. We will publish asset declarations made by ministers and senior officials.

10. We are opening the ministry of administrative reform’s doors to all citizens.

Other promises made relating to administrative reform in general:

– The next elections will be held in March 2013.

– We will begin distancing figures that are notoriously known for their corruption as well as those who have verified links showing so

– A list in being drafted and disciplinary measures will be used.

– A press conference will be held next week to announce the number of those associated with corruption – while keeping names anonymous

– We will pass a law to introduce scheduling flexibility in administrative employment

– We will pass legislation that mandates each ministries supervisory bodies to be attached to a central controller within the first ministry.

Some numbers:

-There are 580,000 employees working in the public sector, corresponding to around 6% of the Tunisian population.

-The average rate of absenteeism in public administration is 30% – in some cases exceeding 60%

-The total net worth of goods confiscated from the Ben Ali family is estimated at 1.2 billion dinars

Translated from french by Wafa Ben Hassine