Training Needs Assessment was conducted by the Freedom of Information Centre of Armenia and the Civil Service Council of the Republic of Armenia, with the support of the OSCE office in Yerevan.   On 23 September 2003 Armenia adopted a comprehensive Freedom of Information law. However, until today the implementation of the FOI law continues to pose a significant challenge for national and local authorities as well as for Armenian society at large. One of the main reasons for current situation is that information holders in governmental structures do not provide information because they are not sufficiently aware of their duties under the law and do not possess the knowledge and skills to implement the law. To bridge this gap, trainings on how to apply the FOI law are necessary for information officers in governmental structures. All fields of government policy need competent information officers, so training courses can serve a group of people working in many different policy domains. However, it is believed that transparency is particularly difficult to achieve in military, police and security agencies in Armenia in light of its current difficult geo-political situation. But they need to operate by the universal democratic principles of transparency, accountability and the rule of law. Therefore it is envisaged to conduct a special pilot training course for the public relations officers representing those agencies. Meanwhile, before conducting systematized trainings for officials, there is a need to assess needs and expectations of officials in terms of FOI trainings. The objective of this project is to assess the level of knowledge of state officials, central and regional, on FOI legislation and the current situation in terms of its implementation practice, with a view of devising a unified access to information training curriculum for civil servants and information officers representing police, military and defense agencies. Full text of the report can be found here.