The House ethics committee on Wednesday discussed a bill which would force the government to post all laws and acts passed on an internet-based platform, with the aim of “ensuring transparency” and “consolidating responsibility and accountability”.

The bill had first been proposed by committee chairman and Disy MP Demetris Demetriou in 2021, and he said his bill foresees that “all administrative acts and decisions of the state, public sector bodies, and bodies which receive at least more than 50 per cent of resources from the state” will be posted on the platform.

He said that in June, after the opinions of all the affected bodies have been received in writing, the committee will then proceed with an article-by-article discussion “so that the bill can be voted into law as soon as possible”.

The aim of his bill, he said, is to bring all the public sector’s actions into one place, and for “things to not be like today, where, to find information, you have to go to five or six websites”.

He said that as such, he said, the public will “be able to find the information for which they are looking”.

Dipa MP Marinos Mousiouttas said the bill is “in a good direction” but asked whether there would be an overlap of responsibilities, given the existence of the official government gazette.

Demetriou responded that the bill would not replace the government gazette, but that the gazette “is not user-friendly”, and that “there is a need for information to be easily accessible to the public”.

Former Disy MP Michalis Sophocleous, who had helped prepare the bill while he was in office, explained that the bill had been put together following a nine-month consultation process, in which he had spoken to various officials from Cyprus’ public sector as well as officials from Greece’s digital governance ministry.

“The proposal is essentially an adaptation to Cyprus of the multi-award winning ‘Diavgeia’ platform which exists in Greece,” he said.

‘Diavgeia’ has been in action in Greece since 2010.