Lost website of FOI ombudsman recovered

Atlatszo.hu now offers otherwise unavailable information of unparalleled importance on the practice of information law in Hungary, as we host a copy of the deleted website of a now-defunct ombudsman. The original website ceased with the office of the Parliamentary Commissioner (simply put, the ombudsman) for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, as Hungary’s new constitution, which came into power in 2012 has handed such responsibilities to a newly founded authority. Atlatszo.hu felt that the site’s archives, offering deep insight to more than one and a half decade of the ombudsman’s workings would be greatly missed from future legal practice, and obtained the last save of the website under freedom of information legislation. The office of the ombudsman, which came to life in 1995 has been internationally considered as a truly progressive element of the Hungarian structure of branches of power. Through the course of its work it has helped to clarify and expand the general understanding of information law, which had formerly been unknown territory to both the general public and the legal community.