On July 27-28 workshop on Freedom of Information was held in Gudauri. The workshop was organized by the United States Agency for International Cooperation (USAID) Good Governance Program (G-3) in Georgia in cooperation with the Ministry of Justice of Georgia. Representatives of 30 governmental agencies, responsible for release of public information were gathered to discuss existing problems and future steps to improve access to public documents in Georgia. Participants were mainly representing the Ministries of Georgia, also legal entities of public law and Tbilisi City Hall.

 
Opening speeches were made by the representative of G-3 Program in Georgia, Deputy Chief of Party Ms. Maia Gogoladze and the Head of the Analytical Department of the Ministry of Justice Mr. Otar Kakhidze. Ms. Gogoladze talked about the projects of the G-3 Program in Georgia related to freedom of information and future plans.

 
Mr. Kakhidze presented about the latest changes in the General Administrative Code of Georgia- Chapter III (Freedom of Information) related to the proactive publishing of information and system of electronic request of information. He also spoke about the Action Plan of Georgian Government for Open Government Partnership and commitments taken by the Government of Georgia. Mr. Kakhidze talked about the plans on developing e-governance, e-participation and plans to created governmental data web-sites, such as data.gov and etc. He also emphasized the importance of cooperation of governmental and NGO sectors on freedom of information issues and about productive and successful work that was already done in this field.



Institute for Development of Freedom of Information was invited to present its project “Research on the best provisions of FOIA” at the workshop.  The research was conducted by IDFI in May-July under the USAID G-3 Program.  Mr. Giorgi Kldiashvili, director of IDFI,spoke about the international regulations of freedom of information and comparative analysis of freedom of information legislation in theUnited States, UK/Scotland, Estonia and Georgia.
 
In the framework of the research IDFI project team conducted analysis of statistical data and content analysis of FoIA requests and answers from G-3 partner governmental agencies (Ministry of Justice of Georgia, Civil Service Bureau, Chamber of Control, Competition and Procurement Agency, Government of the Autonomous Republic of Adjara). As a result of the project, on the basis of the research provided by the IDFI, recommendations were elaborated about how to implement the best international practices of access to public information. In the research special emphasizes were made on proactive disclosure of information and the best practices of the analog to G-3 partner organizations in the above mentioned 3 target countries.
 
Mr. Levan Avalishvili,board chairman of the IDFI, presented recommendations for the governmental organization to improve the practice of access to public documents in Georgia. Recommendations were based on the researchthat the IDFI conducted and examples were given from the US, UK/Scotland and Estonia governmental agencies’ practices and they were specially selected so they could be adopted by the all participant state agencies. Mr. Avalishvili talked about the practice of proactive publishing of information, list of information that must be proactively disclosed and advantages of the electronic access of public information were identified.

 
Presentations were followed by discussion. Questions were asked by the participants, comments were made regarding the research, findings and recommendations of the research and active discussion started on the situation and challenges related to access to public documents in Georgia.
Workshops on freedom of information issues will be continued in the framework of the USAID G-3 Program.