Freedom of Information Center of Armenia.

Due to cooperating with the Freedom of Information Center the RA Police have made essential progress towards freedom of information and transparency.

In 2014 Freedom of Information Center developed and launched “The Freedom of information and Transparency” Index, which consists of 53 criteria. In June 2014 the RA Police took only the 25th place through the 37 bodies getting 58.5 points out of 100.

After getting the “Freedom of information and transparency” Index results the RA Police requested the FOICA to make a contribution to reform their activities in the freedom of information area and to ensure transparency via www.police.am official website.

As a result of cooperation with the FOICA the information in Police website was increased. At present the following information categories can be found in www.police.am:

• The order of getting information from Police;
• The sample of information request;
• The statistics of citizens’ requests applied to Police;
• Declassified information (Police was the first in the state system of government);
• Opportunity to follow the passport departments in online regime;
• Contacts of officials responsible for freedom of information.

Besides, according to 17 September, 2014 decision the chief of the RA Police commended the heads of central machinery services, educational complex, Yerevan and regional departments as well as their territorial departments, “Zvartnots” airport linear department to appoint officials responsible for freedom of information during 10 days.

It’s important, that due to the order the professional preparedness of officials’ responsible for freedom of information has been reviewed. The head of the legal department of Police has been commended to organize seminars and trainings for improving professional qualities and skills of officials' responsible for freedom of information and making this sphere more effective.

It was also mentioned in the order that there is a strong need to strictly follow the requirements of the RA law on Freedom of Information.

The work done by Police for realizing the FOI rights was reflected in the “Freedom of Information and Transparency” Index. The FOICA changed some questions in the index taking into consideration the changes and published new information carried out by Police which had a result that the Police got 70,5 point instead of previous 58,5 and took the 7th place instead of the 25th .