Rule of Law, Human Rights and Freedom of Media

22 November 2014

Practice of Proactive Disclosure of Public Information in State Agencies

Within the auspices of the project, conducted during the period of September-October 2014 IDFI researched to what extent 133 public entities fulfilled their obligation deriving from The Decree on the Electronic Request and Proactive Disclosure of Public Information.

31 October 2014

The Number of Officials Prosecuted for Illegal Wiretapping is Still Unknown

In the year of 2014 IDFI has referred to the Prosecutor’s Office of Georgia, Investigations Service of the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Internal Affairs with the request to provide us with the information on the number of investigations launched on the bases of articles 158 and 159 of the Criminal Code of Georgia. For the detailed ifnormation on the responces received please reffer to the full text of the post.

18 July 2014

Civil Service Recruitment

The civil service recruitment procedures have significantly improved after the adoption of the relevant decree by the Government of Georgia on the 20th of July this year. Overall the legal guarantees of the recruitment process being conducted in an objective and impartial way has been strengthened by the legislation. Nevertheless in the process of comparing Georgian legislation with international practices (the UK and Estonia) it was found that the legislation regulating civil service recruitment issues in Georgia needs further improvements, hence our recommendations are as follows.

10 March 2014

Access to Government Information

Topic of the research is the request of public information and the ways of its publication channels. The research covers issues regarding legal wording analysis, institutional design and publication schemes.

5 March 2014

IDFI was mentioned in the annual Country Report on Human Rights Practices by U.S. Department of State for the second time

Country Report on Human Rights Practices by U.S. Department of State: Georgia The research conducted by IDFI has been mentioned in the annual Country Report on Human Rights Practices by U.S. Department of State for the second time (see the 2012 report). The annual country reports are prepared based on facts provided by U.S. embassies and posts worldwide and give comprehensive overview of human rights in almost 200 countries. The reports are widely used by U.S. government in

29 November 2013

Whistleblowers in Civil Service: International Practice and Georgia

The goal of the study is to evaluate the regulation and court practice regarding the whistleblowers in civil service. The article presents the main direction and recommendations for improving the legislation and practice regarding whistleblowers in Georgia.

25 October 2013

A question of public interest

A vote by the Council of Europes political body could shift the debate about national security towards transparency. A little-noticed vote in Strasbourg on 2 October is in reality a very big deal for whistleblowers, confidential sources and privacy activists. In the vote, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) endorsed the Tshwane principles on national security and the right to information a set of recommendations covering, among other things, how to protec

18 October 2013

Dismissed public servants in terms of gender

From 1st January, 2013 to 1st April 2013, comprehensive information was received from 166 public authorities about dismissed servants from public authorities of Georgia. According to the received data, a total of 21506 public servants, including 2 969 high ranking officers have been dismissed within this period.(The Institute considers the high statistics of the dismissed employees from public authorities is rested on not reasons mentioned above but on the data of the inter agency rotation or

16 October 2013

Statistics of Public Servants in the Public Authorities of Georgia in Terms of Gender

In the framework of the presented study, the Institute for Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI) has inquired assurance of gender equality in terms of labour relations in public authorities of Georgia, equal conditions for public servants as well as public officials’ recruitment and dismissal in public authorities.

5 August 2013

Civil Society Representatives met with the Analytical Department of the Ministry of Justice

On July 31st, 2013, the meeting of the representatives of the public agencies of the Ministry of Justice and civil society organization was held with the initiative of the Analytical Department of the Ministryof Justice, USAID, and Good Governance in Georgia (G-3) program and Institute for development of Public Information (IDFI) at the Ministry of Justice of Georgia. The aim of the meeting was to introduce the draft decree of the Government of Georgia (GoG) on Electronic Request of