RE: Notes of the Freedom of Information Act workshop.

From: Shelly Hermia Bhujun <shelly_hermia_at_hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 2015 21:21:45 +0400

Hello Omdeep,

Thank you for the notes of meeting. I appreciate the effort. I hope you had a good experience and enjoyed the interactive sessions which I believe is very rare nowadays. Thank you for representing the Mauritius Internet Users.

I look forward to see the outcome of the workshop. Are you part of the people who agreed to follow up on the Model Freedom of Information Act in Mauritius? What's next? Will you be working with the other workshop attendees to implement the Freedom of Information Act in Mauritius? Will it be on a monthly basis? How will you proceed?


Kind regards,
Shelly

Date: Mon, 14 Dec 2015 22:30:13 +0400
Subject: Notes of the Freedom of Information Act workshop.
From: omdeep.gokhool1_at_umail.uom.ac.mu
To: mauritius-internet-users_at_lists.elandnews.com
CC: shelly_hermia_at_hotmail.com

Hello Shelly

I attended the workshop on Freedom of Information Act as a representative of the Mauritius Internet Users. Here are the notes and my experience of the workshop.

The workshop started by a welcoming speech and a quick introduction of all the participants. Ms Corinna have an introduction on the Freedom of Information (FOI) and talked also about the history of FOI.

She then moved on the topic " What does a Freedom of Information Act looks like and how will it work". She described the components of the FOI Law which consists of :
Requests process and deadlines Appeal of processExceptions to release
Government Roles and Responsibilities Record ManagementTraining
Reporting
Ms Corinna then explained "What is the FOI Process?" . She mentioned the followings:
Filing and Receiving a request
Producing the requestReview for public and non public informationGovernment response Appeal and deadlines
DisputesThe exceptions to release information were identified as listed below:
Personal InformationNational Security
Economic InformationTrade Secrets and commercial interests
Medical and Educational Record Law enforcement Information
Freedom of Information will bring a culture change and everybody has their role to play, however there will be main players who were identified as follows:
Information Commissioner or ombudsmanMinisters
Information offices and Civil ServicesRequesters
Civil societyMs Corinna mentioned also about "Archives and Records Management", how data will be stored, in catalogues about Indexing and storage. Government employees should learn about the law and know their responsibilities. They should maintain records plan. An Information Officer will be responsible for "Reporting and Oversight" , that is providing statistics such as how long did the process took and statistics on progress. Civil society will also be responsible for reporting and oversee. These informations can be used as feedback to advocate for improvements. Annual audits can be useful.

This was the end of the introduction session and there was a question from Ish Sookun on the purpose and the outcome of this particular workshop. Ms Corinna replied that this depends on each participant, how they want to contribute and how much stake they have in FOI.

After this session were given a small break and the next part of the workshop was about "Drafting-- process + substance.

For this session, all the participants changed their seats to form new groups, to discuss on how to draft a Freedom of information act. We were given a sheet which included questions for discussion on both process and substance of a FOI law.

The questions about the process were :
Who should lead the processwho should be involvedShould there be a drafting committee? If so, who should be part of it.
Should the government take the lead? If so, should they seek input from stakeholders and the public? How would that engagement best work.
The questions on substance were :
Which ministry or office should administer or oversee a FOIA? Should it live in an existing ministry or should it be a new centralized office be created
Who will have responsibility for overseeing FOIA in ministries?
Not all information created or maintained by government is public information. What categories of information should be considered non-public and excepted for release? How can we ensure any exceptions are not so broad as to cover information that should be released?
If a requester disagrees with the government's decision, what options should exist for a recourse? Appeals? Seeking assistance from an Ombudsman or Information Commissioner?
What type of reporting should ministries produce? What would reports include? How often would they be published?
Should information released to a requester be automatically released to the public?Each group was asked to choose a spokesperson and a note taker. Each table had a copy of the Freedom of Information Act of Indian and the United States. These were to be used as examples to answer the given questions.

After this session , participants had lunch and after 30 minutes the next session started. This session focussed on the implementation and examining all roles. Since people will start to use the law, the government must be prepared to respond to requests. So what are the preparation to be done on both sides.

Questions for discussion were :
For government :What are the various roles involved and what duties might correspond to each ?Will regulations, guidance or other best practices be needed? What would they entail ?What must be included in training for government employees? Who should receive the training ?How can government build awareness of a new law and educate the public on what it does (and what it does not do) ?For Requesters :What roles do requesters and the general public play?what type of training or education is needed? Who can assist with this ?
This session ended and was followed by another break. The next session was on using the FOI laws, to demonstrate that we were asked to do a role play. Participants were put in groups of 3, each group had a requester, an Information Officer and a Transport Expert. The main scenario here is the requester contacting the Information officer for information and then the Officer contacts the Transport officer who never heard of the information officer. This was to show the constraints and issues that may arises.

Due to lack of time only 3 groups could do the role play, Ish and Sun volunteered to present their role play, which was quite realistic to what we are already facing when dealing with certain authorities. After this session Ish also mentioned that this Government mentioned FOIA last year and yet nothing has been heard till now.

The last part was a conclusion and mention of what path should stakeholders of FOIA take ? Should there be an output such as a paper or report ? If so, who will lead the process ?

Ms Corinna Zarek asked who wants to go forward with an FOIA and there were few hands in the air. Those interested suggested that we should have a common platform on which we can share our ideas and also how to proceed.

After the workshop we had informal talks with Ms Corinna Zarek, Ms Priya and Ms Fox. Ms Priya said that she will contact us by mail to proceed further with the FOIA. Ms Fox said that she wanted to meet us to know more on the Mauritius Internet Users.

Regards
Omdeep

                                               
Received on Tue Dec 15 2015 - 17:22:00 PST