Coalition for Media Freedom Sent Open Letter to Minister Dejan Ristić: Extend Deadlines for Media Competitions

Open letter of the Coalition for Media Freedom

For the Minister of Information and Telecommunications, Mr. Dejan Ristic

The Coalition for Media Freedom hereby wishes to point out the great dissatisfaction of journalists regarding the functioning of the Unified Information System (Jedinstvenog informacionog sistema- JIS), starting from the very registration of media and media organizations, through the application for candidates for committee members to the application with projects.

Problems reported by users are as follows:

1. The verification of the registration of the organization or the media is waiting for at least two days. In some cases, although the registration was successfully completed, the media and organizations were not visible in the system in the “drop-down menu”, so users are not sure whether the registration was really successful and how it will affect further applications;
2. Captcha service does not work well, so users have problems when logging in to the system;
3. Users have repeatedly inserted complete data about employees, but these data are not visible. Tech says it’s a “server problem”;
4. Registration was complicated due to illogical fields that users could not fill in, because they do not apply to internet portals (permit number, coverage area, etc.);
5. Some candidates for committee members waited more than ten days for their resumes to be evaluated. During that period, they were contacted several times by the Ministry’s technical service regarding the accompanying documentation that is submitted with the curriculum vitae. Namely, the evaluators of the candidates for committee members could not see the accompanying documentation even though it was properly submitted, so the candidates had to insert the same documentation on the platform several times. Because of this, some candidates gave up on the application;
6. Although the application for committee members in some competitions has been formally completed (Novi Pazar, Sremska Mitrovica, Obrenovac, Dimitrovgrad), the applications of candidates are still “pending” (as stated on the JIS application) and the fate of their applications is unknown;
7. Until this moment, the list of registered independent candidates and candidates of associations and associations and the number of points with which the submitted curriculum vitae was evaluated has not been published, which affects the transparency of the candidate selection procedure;
8. The conditions for the application of candidates were changed on the fly, which is against the law and regulations – additional documentation was requested (diplomas, workbooks, publications…) with unclear reasoning, including sending the decision on participation in the commissions of the ministry that announced the competitions, which it already has;
9. Many users are denied technical support because in most cases no one answers the phone numbers left for help, and no one answers letters;
10. The deadlines specified in individual calls do not match the application deadlines in the JIS system;
11. Users could not view the entire list of calls made and had to type the exact name of a particular competition because it was not possible to click on the arrow leading to the next page;
12. When uploading documents to the platform, users noticed that the application opens other people’s documents and they are not sure if the appropriate documentation is visible on the account that the Ministry has access to;
13. When applying for a competition for professionalization, a notification appears that the applicant cannot apply for that competition even though he registered in accordance with the instructions of the Ministry;
14. In certain segments, it is not possible to add more documents (statements), so several documents should be packaged as one;
15. Users of the system justifiably fear that it is possible that the entire system will “fall” on Monday, March 3, when the deadline for applying to the tenders announced by the Ministry is also the deadline.

We have listed the main problems pointed out by users, which prevented them from applying with the projects. We emphasize that many newsrooms are small and do not have a special service that deals with writing projects and applying for competitions, so that journalists, in addition to their basic work, had to additionally deal with technical tasks related to registration on the JIS platform. 

The Coalition for Media Freedom, due to all of the above, believes that it is necessary to extend the deadlines for applications to competitions by at least ten days. Also, to send a letter of recommendation to do the same for the other local governments whose tenders are ending these days.

The extension of the deadlines is necessary due to the data entry in JIS, which is obviously overloaded in certain periods and local media warn that they do not have access. 

We emphasize that although most members of the Coalition do not participate in competitions, this does not mean that we do not follow the process.

When considering this proposal, the Ministry of Information and Telecommunications should keep in mind that the users are not responsible for this situation, but the Ministry that was supposed to provide a functional platform, which obviously was not done on time, but the problems were solved on the fly.

February 28, 2025

The Coalition for Media Freedom: 

The Association of Media

The Association of Online Media (AOM),

The Independent Journalists’ Association of Vojvodina (NDNV),

The Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia (NUNS), 

The Business Association of Local and Independent Media “Local Press”, 

The Slavko Curuvija Foundation and 

Branch Trade Union of Culture, Arts and Media ‘Nezavisnost’