A Consultative Council of the Law on Access to Public Information has just been created in Uruguay.
This advisory and consultative body brings together representatives from the academia, the government and the civil society. The council was mandated by the FOI law.
“It institutionalizes participation and it has an important advocacy strategy to impact on the implementation of the FOIA at the local level,” according to Edison Lanza of CAInfo (El Centro de Archivos y Acceso a la Información Pública), appointed by civil society to represent it.
The members are: the Legislature (Victor Vaillant), Judiciary (Ivonne Carrión), Public Ministry (Mary Saetone), University of the Republic (John Faropa), private universities (Alvaro Eirin), and civil society (Edison Lanza -CAInfo).
The first meeting was attended by members of the Executive Board of the Unit Access to Public Information chaired by Sonia Sena and also directors Ongay Maria del Carmen and Jose Clastornik, in his capacity as director of AGESIC.
The council is being asked to advise on the establishment of standards to help define the exceptions to the law on access to information, not currently defined, such as national defense, public safety , the harm to international relations, as well as the alleged confidential information (personal or contractual confidentiality clauses).
For further information (in Spanish) see the press release from CAInfo.
Filed under: What's New