The Centre for Law and Democracy (CLD) is partnering the government of Pakistan through the Information Commissions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab
provinces, to develop a sophisticated, comprehensive methodology for
assessing the quality of implementation of right to information (RTI) laws, reports ITRealms.
Toby Mendel, Executive Director, CLD, disclosed this and said that although the
methodology is being designed in Pakistan, it will be easy to adapt it for
other jurisdictions.
“This is groundbreaking development work in the area of the
right to information. It is really exciting to be able to work with the
Information Commissions and other stakeholders in Pakistan on something that
will hopefully have global application,” Mendel said.
The impetus for preparing this methodology, CLD explained,
has come in part from Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Indicator 16.10.2,
which looks at whether States have adopted and implemented right to information
legislation.
The RTI Rating provides us with an accurate assessment of
the first part of this – namely the adoption of RTI legislation – and this
methodology supplements that by assessing implementation.
The methodology looks at four key areas, namely Central
Measures, focusing on information commissions, Institutional Measures, focusing
on structural measures taken by individual public authorities (like appointing
an information officer), Proactive Disclosure and Reactive Disclosure (the
processing of requests).
Extensive consultations around the draft methodology were
conducted in February and again last week. The goal is to finalise the
methodology soon and then pilot its application in one or two jurisdictions in
Pakistan before revising it to take into account those results. The Methodology
has been developed with the technical support of the German Development
Cooperation and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.
Chuks Egbune/GEE
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