On March 28 the Freedom of Information Center of Armenia (FOICA) held a working session on “Access to Information”, which was attended by freedom of information officers representing the Armenian Parliament, Government, various Ministries, other public bodies and journalists.

Following the presentation by Shushan Doydoyan, President of the FOICA, on the current regulation of the freedom of information, the participants discussed practices in implementing Armenia’s FOI legislation, presented their experiences and came up with suggestions on how to solve the existing challenges. The participants had an opportunity to voice main problems arising during interactions between state bodies and media and to discuss mutually acceptable ways to resolve these problems.

Discussions focused on the role of social networks in the process of the state bodies’ publication of official information and their interaction with the media, as well as on the effective formats for the use of social networks in parallel to official websites.

Gevorg Hayrapetyan, the Head of Personal Data Protection Agency/Ministry of Justice, spoke about the need to balance the rights of access to information and personal data protection, followed by a discussion on the practical peculiarities of publishing personal data, also due to a prevailing public interest.

The participants identified priority areas subject to regulation in FOI field, which will require elaborating joint steps with the involvement of all parties concerned in the near future.

The event was held with the assistance of the British Embassy to Armenia.