Kherson Regional State Administration Failed to Comply with the Law on Open Budget Data

Kherson regional military administrations formally publish documents on local budgets for 2025, but most files are consolidated into a single PDF with texts and annexes. This makes real access to information in a convenient format virtually impossible.

The Center for Public Investigations continued to examine how the military administrations of Kherson Oblast comply with the legal requirements for publishing information on local budgets for 2025. There are six such administrations in the region. At the same time, most military structures use old websites of district or regional administrations - often without even renaming them.

As it should be, the law requires local councils to approve budgets and openly publish them in a convenient, machine-readable format. In practice, however, the situation varies greatly from community to community: some try to make access to documents simple and clear, while others hide important information so that it has to be searched throughout the website.

The law provides for separate rules for military administrations. The heads of the military administrations have the right to approve local budgets, and their orders are equivalent to council decisions and must be made public - if they do not contain classified information.

The Kherson RSA is the first to strike the eye. The website has two almost identical sections with orders, and both lead to a Google drive. There, you have to select the year and month, and then open a file with a list of documents. It's not hard to find what you need, but the document itself is a single PDF with text and attachments merged together. Formally, there is access, but the requirements for open data are not met.

The situation is similar on the website of the Kakhovka District State Administration. The menu looks clearer, the documents are easy to find, but the story is the same - PDFs with merged texts and attachments. On the website of Skadovsk RSA, documents are also quickly found, and there is an internal search.

However, they are in DOC format and again in one file. This format is not suitable for open data - applications should be separate and structured.

Kherson District Administration uses a similar approach: Google Drive, folders by month, and a file with a list of resolutions. You can find the document without any problems, but inside it is again a PDF with texts and annexes in one file.

There is a website, but no documents The Genichesk District State Administration has a section on its website called 'Official Documents', but it is empty. There are no other places where resolutions could be found. The website is updated, news is published, but no budget documents are posted. This is partial openness only "on paper".

The situation in Beryslav district administration is even worse: the website simply does not open. The system shows that the hosting period has expired. Accordingly, it is physically impossible to check whether documents are being published.

Thus, out of six military administrations in Kherson region:

• four publish documents, but do so in formats that do not meet the requirements of the law;
• one does not publish documents at all, although the website is working;
• one administration does not provide access to the website. The result is that "formal openness" does not guarantee transparency.

Documents may be published, but if they are hidden in archives, consolidated into a single PDF or presented in an inconvenient format, it is almost impossible to use them effectively.

The Center for Public Investigations also investigated how 15 communities in the Kakhovka district of Kherson Oblast comply with the law on the publication of budget documents.

Анна Бальчінос