Information technology and law: Ministry of Justice offers to authorize the agency to be the official publisher of legal documents

The Ministry of Justice of Russia deems it necessary to authorize its online resource to be the source of publication of official documents, along with the "Russian Newspaper" and the Bulletin of Normative Legal Acts of Federal Executive Bodies. This was announced by Deputy Minister Viktor Evtukhov at the Theoretical & Practical Conference on Legal Regulation in Electronic Environment hosted by the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library.

He explained that he considered it a logical step in order to make the information provided in electronic form legally significant.

According to Deputy Minister, since 1999 the Ministry of Justice has been providing online public access to regulatory and legal acts of federal, regional and municipal levels. He said that currently the agency’s website has published over 3 million acts of various levels, including 1.6 million municipal acts. Besides, the additional information is also available: Information about the legal review, the conclusion of the prosecution, the publication of court decisions regarding acts challenge, FAS of Russia directions and other documents. "At the moment we are trying to expand the list of available legal documents by publishing on our web-site departmental regulations, which are submitted to us for registration," added Mr Evtukhov.

Deputy Head of the Russian Ministry of Justice also said that the ministry is testing a legal Internet portal of the law enforcement state. "As a result, Internet users will have access to information on the monitoring results and the opportunity to express their opinion on the effectiveness of laws," said Mr Evtukhov. The deputy minister added that the analysis and synthesis of proposals made by citizens will be conducted not only by employees of the Ministry of Justice, but also by invited experts. "Successful monitoring of enforcement is possible in full only if it is held not only by government officials, scientists, or even lawyers in private practice," he says. Ensuring an efficient operation of the portal and its fulfillment with information is, according to Mr Evtukhov, one of the priorities of the Ministry of Justice in 2012.