Freedom of Information Center of Armenia.

These officials have violated the people’s access to information right in the 2nd quarter of 2013

Mr. Samvel Tadevosyan - the Minister of Urban Development

On April 3, 2013 the Freedom of Information Center sent an information request to the RA Ministry of Urban Development, asking to provide the copies of the procurement contracts signed by the Ministry. The Ministry provided an unjustified refusal, claiming that the contracts contain trade secret of the companies whom contracts were signed with.

On June 24, 2013 the FOICA sent another request to the RA Ministry of Urban Development mentioning than the refusal was unjustified and once again asking to provide the copies of the procurement contracts. But the Ministry again provided an unjustified refusal, as the Ministry provided some information about the signed contracts, but again failed to provide copies of contracts. It should be noted that the Ministry has answered that it has signed 19 contracts, and 4 out of these 19 contracts are published on the RA Governments' website www.e-gov.am Therefore, it is unclear if some of the requested documents have been published, then why are they considered a trade secret upon request.

Though in the 2nd quarter of the 2013 the Freedom of Information Centre sent 65 information requests (including the double requests) to the different information holders, but all the information holders responded either to the FOICA's first, or to the FOICA's double requests. It should be noted, that this is not a qualitative indicator of the responses: there are still a lot of  Incomplete and unjustified responses, which, however, are not reflected in the black list. Thus, from July 1, 2013, the FOICA will introduce more rigorous criteria for blacklisting (http://www.foi.am/en/news/item/1271/).