Freedom of Information Center of Armenia.

The problem of officials responsible for FOI was finally solved. It is a requirement of the RA FOI Law for information holders to have an official responsible for FOI. The FOICA constantly evaluates the abilities and work of information holders and the FOICA’s analyzes identified, that the state bodies do not have a separate official responsible for FOI and the duties of the official responsible for FOI are shared between the department of public relations, the press secretary and sometimes other official as well. As of February 10, 2015 officials responsible for FOI were appointed in all the ministries and all the regional administrations. FOICA compiled a complete list of all these officials with their names, contacts, web site links, legal acts on the appointments and made this document widely available for the civil society and journalists. The complete list of all the nominated FOI officers is available at http://www.foi.am/hy/news/item/1431/ and http://www.foi.am/hy/news/item/1435/ (in Armenian).

FOI Trainings for public officials was included in the Armenian second OGP Action plan (commitment 10th). It is planned to train 200 officials in FOI and anticorruption areas. However, no budget money has been allocated for this purpose in 2015. FOICA is consulting with donor community to find support since this commitment was included in the second action plan by the initiative of the FOICA.

On October 15, 2015, the RA Government adopted a new FOI sub-legal Act regulating new procedure of information provision. This Act coordinated and regulated the work of officials responsible for FOI. The Act establishes that the head of an information holder or an official appointed by an information holder are responsible for freedom of information in their respective institution. The new regulation also states, that the contacts of FOI officers of institutions should be published via official websites of information holders.