Ministry of Justice of Georgia in cooperation with the Open Society Georgia Foundation and engagement of experts and non-governmental organizations has commenced working on elaborating the separate law on freedom of information.

The freedom of information draft law was discussed by the experts on the February 13 meeting held in Courtyard Marriot.

The new law intends to unite all the freedom of information regulating normative acts in one law which will establish the new standard of government transparency and will put emphases on the openness of the government and public administration policy.

The round table meeting was conducted within the frames of Anti-corruption Interagency Coordination Council and with the support of the Open Society Foundation Georgia. The chairman of the meeting was the deputy minister of Justice Aleksandre Baramidze. The meeting was attended by the representatives of executive and judicial authorities, international and local non-governmental organizations and diplomatic corps.

The participants of the meeting discussed the processing of FoI legislation, its concept and defined major challenging and problematic issues.

‘Institute for Development of Freedom of Information’ is actively involved in creating the FoI legislation and in elaborating the mechanisms that will guarantee its implementation.

FoI law will be elaborated by three groups. The law must specify the dates of releasing the information; it must also define the information public registry and must oblige each institution to provide the FoI officer.

Simultaneously to discussing the law, participants also discussed the issue of creating the monitoring body – commissionaire’s institute.

Director of ‘Institute for Development of Freedom of Information’ Giorgi Kldiashvili, who at the same time is one of the experts involved in elaborating the legislation, presented the report on the importance of commissionaire’s institute, its functions and international practice. According to Kldiashvili, such institution exists independently in certain countries. In some cases it is combined with the Personal Data Protection Inspectorate or is subordinated to the Ombudsman. He believes that commissionaire must be independent and must have the ability of sanctioning and public control, thus the level of his independent must be guaranteed.

Commissionaire will be eligible to discuss the FoI related complaints, to sanction the administrative bodies; He will also conduct consultations with the stakeholders on the issue of requesting the information. He will also be constantly monitoring the compliance of release of information by the administrative bodies.