A web-site promoting free access to information opened in Armenia

Within the framework of a project "Application of the legislation on freedom of information in Armenia" and with financial support of OSCE Office in Yerevan and the US Agency for International Development, Center of Freedom of Information in Yerevan presented its new web-site givemeinfo.am. The web-site shows statistic situation with freedom of information in Armenia and all the requests of Center of Freedom of Information for the period of 2010-1011 are placed there.

The originators of the project are Center of Freedom of Information (CFI) and "Helix Consulting" as well as the author of the idea of the web-site Albert Pogosyan and expert on informational security Samvel Martirosyan. 

In the opinion of Carel Hofstra, Deputy Manager of OSCE Office in Yerevan, in spite of the fact that there is a legislative progress in different spheres, including freedom of information, the country still needs improvement of domain field of law. 

Albert Pogosyan said that givemeinfo.am might become a good instrument which would allow everyone to enter one's informational request in this way "forming the image of freedom of information in Armenia". The web-site also lets one monitor replies of the respective organizations to one or another request.

Center of Freedom of Information also presented the results of its monitoring "Freedom of Information in Armenia - 2011".

The monitoring was carried out beginning from March, 2011.

The monitoring allowed to see the real picture of freedom of information in Armenia. 250 requests to 50 organizations were sent within the framework of the program. Proper answers were received to 56% out of them, there was no reply to 30,4% (76 requests) and only seven were declined. 

"It appears that the organizations who did not wish to provide information preferred not to answer at all instead of a written refusal", Shushan Doidoyan, Chairperson of CFI remarked. 

According to expert of CFI Liana Doidoyan, the answers to the requests do not come in time. Belated answers were given to 47 requests. There were cases when replies arrived only in one month and 16 days.

Among the ministries, the Ministry of Education and Science and the Ministry of Justice showed positive results. 

Negative results were demonstrated by village communities Tsava and Aigedzora, close corporation "Clinical Hospital" and "Catherine Group" limited company. All these organizations provided not a single answer to five requests directed to them.

According to the monitoring, the results shown by National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia were far from being satisfactory. It gave two refusals to five requests one of which, in the expert's opinion, was "groundless", one reply was "inferior" and two belated.