On September 27, Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Avinyan received Shushan Doydoyan, President of Freedom of Information Center of Armenia and Mane Madoyan, Coordinator of Freedom of Information Civic Initiative.
Welcoming the guests, the Deputy Prime Minister noted that transparency and accountability are the main guidelines of the Government. He highlighted the continues work of civil society in protecting the right to freedom of information in Armenia and developing a relevant culture, as well as assisting in the development of legislation in the field.
Expressing gratitude for the reception, Shushan Doydoyan considered it symbolic that the meeting is taking place on the eve of the International Day of Freedom of Information and attached importance to the attention of the high level of political leadership on this issue. According to her, one of the impetus of the meeting was the instruction of the Deputy Prime Minister on September 5 to the state bodies to observe the provisions of the RA Law on Freedom of Information.
Shushan Doydoyan emphasized that according to their analysis, significant progress was made in ensuring freedom of information in 2019 compared to 2018. At the same time, there are still a number of problems and challenges on the field. She presented the gaps in the public management system-citizen relationship and made suggestions for their solution. In this regard, Tigran Avinyan noted that the process of elaborating a public administration reform strategy has begun recently, with the aim of completely revising the governance system, which, among other issues, will ensure transparency, accountability of the public system.
The Deputy Prime Minister said that many of the provisions proposed by civil society would be included into the public administration reform strategy and suggested the interlocutors to be actively involved in this process.
In addition, an agreement was reached that the organizations present at the meeting would be subject to ongoing monitoring of the situation regarding the right to freedom of information and would submit the results to the attention of the Government.
