“The whole process of creating these projects was carried out in secret from the civil society and all of society,” Shushan Doydoyan, director of the Freedom of Information Center, expressed such an opinion during the discussion on the topic “To close information for the sake of national defense: Is the need for the project of the Ministry of High-Tech Industry justified?”
The Ministry of High-Tech Industry had circulated a draft on E-draft according to which the purposes of government employees’ business trips, topics of discussion, meetings, speeches, and decisions made during those meetings should not be published on the Egov platform. That caused a lot of criticism among experts.
Shushan Doydoyan said that there was a specific agreement with the government according to which all projects on press, freedom of information, and free expression should be developed and implemented with the close participation and involvement of civil society. “In fact, inclusion and participation was not ensured in the whole process, so there can be no question of creating a quality document that can be acceptable to us.”
Shushan Doydoyan painfully noted, “The de facto government wishes to register a setback in the field of information and access that it has already acquired. Transparency in public procurement and business trips in the fight against corruption are the two areas where corruption abuses take place, which the civil society must report. Civil society is deprived of proactive access to information, while it should no longer depend on civil society whether the government will provide information or not. Public information must be available so that civil society can exercise public oversight when necessary.”
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Tatev Harutyunyan
