The Togolese Council of Ministers has adopted on first reading a decree on the implementation of March 30, 2016, law on freedom of access to information and public documentation.
“This Decree establishes and specifies the provisions to be adopted by anyone wishing to access information and public documentation, thus making it possible to overcome the shortcomings linked to the freedom of access to information and public in our country ” explained the Minister of Communication, Guy Lorenzo, according to a news report. (See previous Freedominfo.org report on adoption of law.)
The decree establishes an inter-ministerial committee for the digitization of administrative documents (CNDA) responsible for ensuring the online publication of information on the websites www.data.gouv.tg and www.service-public.gouv.tg, the minister continued.
According to a communiqué of the Council of Ministers, “the adoption of this decree will allow easy access to public information and documentation to all citizens wherever they are,” according to another report, which provides some further detail.
Article 1 of the law provides that information includes any original or copy of a document regardless of its physical characteristics such as correspondence, facts, opinions, notices, memoranda, data, statistics, books, drawings, maps , Diagrams, photographs, audiovisual recordings.
Article 2 goes on to state that “public information and documents whose disclosure would affect, inter alia, security and national defense, and instructions pending before the courts, are excluded from the scope of that law.
Under Article 46, any challenge by an applicant to a public body’s decision on access to public information and documentation takes place in four ways: gratis recourse, hierarchical recourse, Before the Mediator of the French Republic and the judicial remedy.
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