RA PRIME MINISTER TIGRAN SARGSYAN ATTENDED TODAY THE ANNUAL GALA AWARD FOR FREEDOM OF INFORMATION AS ORGANIZED SINCE THE PASSING OF THE RA LAW ON FREEDOM OF INFORMATION

Monday, 28 September 2009

RA Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan attended today the annual gala award
for freedom of information as organized since the passing of the RA Law
on Freedom of Information by the Information Freedom Center every year
on the 28th of September – the International Information Freedom Day.

Congratulating those present on the occasion, the Prime Minister
spoke about the problems available in the field of information
freedom. According to him, the modern world is based on knowledge
and information and, in this respect, knowledge-based economies
cannot be developed without ensuring free access to information:
"This urges us to look for new approaches to the problem. We must
build up such a framework as would make it possible to reveal the
existing shortfalls by exposing those agencies which fail to provide
information of public interest."

Tigran Sargsyan also spoke about the importance of ensuring freedom of
information throughout the public sector: "Agency performance should
be assessed based on their compliance with the criterion of objective
information freedom as well. We are going to submit to you the full set
of per-agency criteria so that civil society could decide in future ho
w well a piece of information reflects reality. In the first place,
these criteria should specify the type and frequency of information
provided by ministers and ministries. Then we will need to determine
which way the government agency-civil society feedback should be
structured by specifying the deadlines for agency responsiveness to
applications, requests, inquiries, as well as establishing the manner
in which they should work with mass media. This must be done in the
institutional order."

The head of government said to be hopeful that his participation will
encourage and promote this process.

The 2009 Information Freedom Golden Keys were handed in by Prime
Minister Tigran Sargsyan, Director of the Information Freedom Center
Shushan Doidoyan, as well as by the heads of Armenia’s Human Rights
Office, USAID Armenia Office and OSCE Yerevan Office.