Freedom of Information Center of Armenia conducted a study on the official websites of the RA government and bodies under the Government and Prime Minister to determine the level of compliance with the law regarding the posting of 2022 statistics of information requests. Unfortunately, the overall findings are discouraging, as only a quarter of the bodies examined published updated statistical data.
To reiterate, the Law of the Republic of Armenia “On Freedom of Information” states that “unless otherwise provided by the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia and/or the law, the information manager shall publish statistical and summary data on the requests received at least once a year, including the reasons for refusal.”
The research conducted in June 2023 and focused on 28 state bodies, including the Prime Minister’s Office, all ministries, and the bodies under the Government and the Prime Minister.
As of June 20, 2023, the results of the study reveal that only 7 bodies complied with the law and published the required statistics. These state bodies are:
• Ministry of Health;
• Ministry of High-Tech Industry;
• Ministry of Defense;
• Ministry of Territorial Administration and Infrastructure;
• Environmental Protection and Mining Inspection Body;
• Ministry of Finance;
• Food Safety Inspectorate.
Last two departments published monthly summarized data.
All other bodies failed to comply with the law, as the statistics on information requests on their websites are either unavailable or the posted data remains outdated.
In the previous year, the Prime Minister’s Office, Justice Ministry, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Economy, and National Security Service did not update the statistics sections on their websites regarding information requests.
Certain websites, such as the Education Inspectorate, Market Supervision Inspectorate, and State Supervisory Service, had completely empty “Statistics” sections.
The State Control Service had a section dedicated to the statistics of information requests received in 2022, but the data had not been published yet.
While some bodies presented quantitative data on received applications, complaints, recommendations, and other writings, they did not separate the number of requests for information in the published documents. These state bodies include the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports, State Revenue Committee, Urban Development Committee, and Urban Development, Technical Standards and Fire Safety Inspectorate.
Although the websites of the Ministry of Emergency Situations and the Nuclear Safety Committee had dedicated statistics sections, they lacked up-to-date data on information requests.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs and the State Protection Service were excluded from the observations since these bodies do not have official websites at present.
In summary, the observations made by the FOICA indicate that the requirement to publish annual statistics of information requests is not being adequately fulfilled by the RA ministries, government, and bodies subordinate to the Prime Minister. It is important to note that these observations solely address the technical aspect of the issue: whether or not updated data is being published. A separate study focusing on the qualitative aspect of the published statistics is necessary, as it could uncover problems related to data collection and statistics management methodologies, as well as the comparability of statistics among different structures.
It is worth mentioning that the FOICA has developed a template for the publication of information request statistics in 2022, which was provided to the Government in order to promote a unified practice in conducting and publishing such statistics.
