The Law on Access to Public Information will come into full effect on September 18th in Paraguay. The country is preparing for a full implementation of this legislation by exchanging experiences and learning from several countries in the region that have made progress in this area, such as Brazil, Chile and Uruguay.
At a time when access to information is increasingly vital for greater government transparency, Paraguay, with support from the World Bank’s South-South Knowledge Exchange Trust Fund (SSKETF) wants to learn from other countries’ experiences to accelerate its implementation.
"The Government of Paraguay has shown a great commitment to the agenda of open and transparent government; we welcome those efforts and are supporting them through our cooperation strategy with the country", said Dante Mossi, World Bank representative in Paraguay.
This initiative is part of the World Bank’s support to the country on issues of public transparency which further comprises other efforts such as budget transparency, public procurement and social audit.
"It is not just important to have a law on access to public information. It is also important that the law is implemented. Hence the importance of this peer exchange that contributed to the creation of an inter-agency task force to coordinate the implementation of the Law and the formulation of an action plan with priority areas of work in Paraguay", said Daniela Felcman of the Global Governance Practice of the World Bank and one of the managers of this support program.
Learning from Brazil and Uruguay
In this context and following the visit of the expert of the Council for Transparency in Chile, we had a conversation with Mariana Gatti, adviser to the Unit of Access to Public Information (UAIP) of the Agency for the Development of Electronic Government and Knowledge and Information Society (AGESIC) of Uruguay and Marcelo Levy, expert of the Comptroller General's Office (CGU) from Brazil.
