" ITREALMS: CLD, partners govt on implementation of Right to Information - ITREALMS Online

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Thursday, July 12, 2018

CLD, partners govt on implementation of Right to Information - ITREALMS Online

The Centre for Law and Democracy (CLD) is partnering the government of Pakistan through the Information Commissions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab provinces, to develop a sophisticated, comprehensive methodology for assessing the quality of implementation of right to information (RTI) laws, reports ITRealms.

Toby Mendel, Executive Director, CLD,  disclosed this and said that although the methodology is being designed in Pakistan, it will be easy to adapt it for other jurisdictions.

“This is groundbreaking development work in the area of the right to information. It is really exciting to be able to work with the Information Commissions and other stakeholders in Pakistan on something that will hopefully have global application,” Mendel said.

The impetus for preparing this methodology, CLD explained, has come in part from Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Indicator 16.10.2, which looks at whether States have adopted and implemented right to information legislation.

The RTI Rating provides us with an accurate assessment of the first part of this – namely the adoption of RTI legislation – and this methodology supplements that by assessing implementation.

The methodology looks at four key areas, namely Central Measures, focusing on information commissions, Institutional Measures, focusing on structural measures taken by individual public authorities (like appointing an information officer), Proactive Disclosure and Reactive Disclosure (the processing of requests).


Extensive consultations around the draft methodology were conducted in February and again last week. The goal is to finalise the methodology soon and then pilot its application in one or two jurisdictions in Pakistan before revising it to take into account those results. The Methodology has been developed with the technical support of the German Development Cooperation and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.

Chuks Egbune/GEE

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