ANNUAL REPORT ON THE RESULTS OF THE ACTIVITIES OF THE INSTITUTION OF THE HUMAN RIGHTS OMBUDSMAN OF BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA 400 340 350 291 300 250 275 248 223 Number of cases 200 Issued recommendations 150 100 50 0 34 2015 49 2016 60 2017 50 2018 57 2019 The Institution is satisfied with the cooperation it has achieved in 2019 with the most of public authorities. In a few cases, cooperation has not been established, and a detailed account of public authorities with which cooperation has not been established is given in the Annex to this report. In the reporting period good practice of some public authorities to address the Ombudsman in the case of the ambiguities related to the manner of implementation of this Law in some specific case was continued. In such situations Ombudspersons provided their opinion about different issues. These opinions involved information and data about the public competition procedures in the area of employment 23, checking the veracity of public servants' diplomas 24, information on the public bodies employees 25, publishing of the Register of employees in the public sector of Sarajevo Canton 26, and handing over the health documents and health registers of the patients to the police.27 In 2019, in co-operation with the OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina, trainings were held in the area of access to information, attended by public officials from the Brčko District of BiH and Canton 10, as well as a workshop on "The Work Mechanism of the BiH Ombudsman Institution", at which freedom of access to information was discussed. Among important activities of the Ombudsman in 2019 was engagement in checking the veracity of public servants' diplomas. Example: The Ombudsman received a letter from the Secretariat of the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina requesting an opinion regarding the implementation of the diploma verification activities in respect of civil servants. In relation to these issues, the Personal Data Protection Agency in Bosnia and Herzegovina has issued an Opinion, stating, inter alia, „we believe that suspecting all public documents in this way is detrimental to the public interest as Ž-SA-05-1397/19 Ž-SA-05-580/19 25 Ž-SA-05-1148/19 26 Ž-SA-05-449/19 27 Ž-SA-05-1143/19 23 24 21