Finance Ministry Rejects Responsibility for Leaked UHP Document on IT Projects

Bratislava, 16 January (TASR) - The Finance Ministry has rejected accusations that it has been irresponsibly handling sensitive documents after an evaluation drawn up by its Value for Money (UHP) department with regard to planned investments by the National Agency for Network and Electronic Services (NASES) into the state's IT systems was leaked to the public, TASR reported on Friday based on information from the Finance Ministry. In this connection, the Investment, Regional Development and Informatisation Ministry (MIRRI) has already announced that it intends to file a criminal complaint. "The Finance Ministry rejects accusations that it's irresponsibly handled sensitive documents. In such cases, the ministry always communicates, including on behalf of UHP, in a standard manner and only with a small circle of competent people while complying with all legal standards applicable to security; in this particular case with responsible people from NASES and MIRRI," stated the Finance Ministry. On Thursday, MIRRI "strongly objected" to the unauthorised disclosure and dissemination of a UHP internal document that contained a preliminary evaluation of projects involving IT systems for the slovensko.sk website. According to MIRRI, some facts stated in the document are subject to protection as restricted information under the Act on the Protection of Classified Information. MIRRI considers it exceptionally irresponsible for UHP to allow the disclosure of a document that not only contained restricted information but was prepared just three days after a key opinion was received from an expert assessment organisation about the state of the public administration central website (UPVS), with two of those three days being weekend days. "Such conduct doesn't indicate an effort to objectively assess the project, unless this proves to be a leak of a working version of the document," stated MIRRI. jrg/df