National Center of Legal Information of the Republic of Belarus
Forming information society in Belarus is one of the priority tasks of the national development. Belarus has made real steps in the direction of introducing information technologies into legal sphere and thereby has made public information on the activity of state bodies accessible to a wide set of people.
State system of legal information of the Republic of Belarus (SSLI) created on the base of application of modern information technologies to legal sphere guarantees to everyone the possibility to realize his/her inalienable right to get complete, valid and official legal information.
Functioning and development of the SSLI is provided by the National Center of Legal Information of the Republic of Belarus (the NCLI) which is a central state scientific and practical institution in the sphere of legal informatization and also a real ideologist and coordinator of these processes and which performs these functions in accordance with the decisions of the President of the Republic of Belarus.
The NCLI carries out its activity in accordance with the Edict of the President of the Republic of Belarus No.338 of June 30, 1997 and the Edict of the President of the Republic of Belarus No. 524 of October 30, 1998.
Since August, 2006 the Director of the National Center of Legal Information of the Republic of Belarus is Oleg E. Kravtsov. He was appointed to the post by the Edict of the President of the Republic of Belarus No.545 of August 29, 2006.
The main tasks of the National Center of Legal Information of the Republic of Belarus are the following:
- forming and conducting the unified standard databank of legal information of the Republic of Belarus;
- creation and development of the state system of legal information, coordination of the activity in the sphere of introducing the computer systems and databanks of legal information and also dissemination of legal information;
- participation in preparing drafts of laws and other legal acts;
- holding scientific researches in the sphere of legal informatization;
- maintenance of interstate legal information exchange;
- participation in preparation and holding works on legal informatization.
On the basis of the Regulation on the National Center of Legal Information of the Republic of Belarus and in the frameworks of solving its main tasks the NCLI:
- provides conducting of the National Register of Legal Acts of the Republic of Belarus and carries out its official publication;
- forms and conducts the standard databank of legal information of the Republic of Belarus in paper and electronic forms:
- forms and conducts computer databank of law drafts of the Republic of Belarus;
- organizes the dissemination of legal information and also development and realization of the state program of legal informatization;
- creates regional centers of legal information and supervises over their activity;
- organizes development and improvement of software, technological and other support of automated systems of legal information;
- carries out collecting of legal acts in the order established by the legislation, and also their processing and updating on paper and electronic carriers;
- in the established order participates in working out drafts of laws regulating issues of legal informatization;
- carries out works on conducting and maintaining the Unified Legal Classifier of the Republic of Belarus, terminological legal dictionary (thesaurus), other dictionaries and classifiers for using them in the unified system of legal information;
- forms and conducts database of international treaties of the Republic of Belarus;
- forms databases of legal acts of oblast (Minsk City) Councils of Deputies and relevant executive and administrative bodies;
- participates in creation of automated systems of inter-state legal information exchange and also in forming a single information space of the Commonwealth of Independent States;
- carries out works on forming, conducting and maintenance of the National Legal Internet Portal of the Republic of Belarus.
The Center has its affiliations in all oblast centers and in Minsk City. An absolute majority of its employees have higher education, as a rule, legal, mathematic, technical engineering and philological. The average age of its specialists is 35 years.
For a long-term productive work and significant contribution to improvement of the state system of legal information Yuly Kashinsky, the first Director of the NCLI (from 1997 to 2006), was awarded the medal “For Working Accomplishments” by the Edict of the President of the Republic of Belarus of July 5, 2002 No. 366. The President of the Republic of Belarus has announced Gratitude to two NCLI’s employees, ten of them were awarded the Diplomas of the Administration of the President of the Republic of Belarus.
The important result of the activity of the Center is that for the short term an effective state system of legal information based on application of modern information technologies has been created in Belarus. This system is an integral multi-component mechanism allowing to accumulate legal acts adopted in the country, keep them updated and provide every person, who has a need in such information, with the standard legal information. In Belarus, the problems of consolidation of the streams of legal information into one state structure at the level of all branches of government have been solved. A procedure of obligatory and timely presentation of legal acts to the NCLI, regardless of the level of the body adopting them, has been elaborated and is in effect. Per se, the evolution of introduction of informatization into legal sphere on the basis of combination of modern computer technologies and legislation has taken place.
Already one year after its creation the NCLI has organized an effective provision of legal information to the state bodies, substantially broadened the sphere of dissemination of legal information in electronic form, established close business contacts with similar organizations in the CIS member-states and provided significant enlargement of inter-state legal information exchange (from the Decision of the Collegiums of the Administration of the President of the Republic of Belarus held in the NCLI on January 26, 1999).
The NCLI in practice guarantees the realization of the constitutional right of citizens of the Republic of Belarus to receive complete, valid and timely legal information, contributes to increase of the quality of law-making and law enforcement activity, promotes the legal culture of the Belarusian society. Many people use legal information prepared by the Center. |