The workshop for journalists of various local media organizations about Open Government Partnership (OGP) was held in Batumi on September 19, 2014. The meeting organized by Institute for Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI) was held in the Center for Civic Engagement in Batumi within the framework of the project Facilitate Open Government Partnership Initiative.

Participants of the meeting received information about the Partnership in general and commitments which should be implemented within the framework of Open Government Partnership Georgia’s Action Plain 2014-2015.

The speaker Giorgi Kldiashvili, director of IDFI spoke about importance of open data and the commitments connected with it – elaborating Freedom of Information Act, creating open data portal Data.gov.ge and developing citizen’s portal my.gov.ge.

Participants of the workshop were informed about other commitments such as: Proactive Publication of Surveillance Statistics, set up public officials’ asset declaration monitoring system, increase openness and accessibility of National Archives, create E-petitions portal I-Change.ge and establish an effective mechanism to inform the public on budgetary processes as well.

Giorgi Kldiashvili emphasized the importance of civil society engagement in creating action plan and said that media has crucial role to provide society’s awareness about OGP commitments and to monitor how well responsible agencies fulfill their liabilities .

Journalists were interested in what kind of new regulations will be added to the new law about freedom of information and how current problems will be solved.