In June, the FOI Center organized working discussions of draft package of amendments in the area of freedom of information. Public affairs, information officers and press secretaries from various agencies and public service companies, as well as representatives of local and international non-governmental organizations participated in these discussions. According to Shushan Doydoyan, President of the FOI Center, “legislative amendments have to do with harmonization of legislation; also, there was a need to establish administrative responsibility. Also, legislation did not regulate certain essential issues. In particular, the current law contains certain elements of discrimination between the RA citizens and foreign citizens when it comes to receiving information.” Many recommendations were made during the discussion.

They were mainly related to procedures for receiving information, peculiarities of oral and written requests for information, definition of the notion of “information,” fees, etc. All the recommendations were hotly debated. The working group accepted some of the recommendations right away; as for other recommendations, the working group promised to take them into consideration when drafting the final version of the package.