Access to Information: what difference does it make?
In a recent article on the MeTA website Richard Calland writes:
“The right of access to information has gone through a massive growth spurt in the past decade. More than fifty countries have passed access to information (ATI) laws of some sort. The right to seek and receive information, and the state’s duty to process such requests for information, has been the subject of a ground-breaking case that came before the inter-American Court of Human Rights. Now it is possible to say that the ‘right to know’ is incontrovertibly enshrined in international law.”
The article goes on to discuss ATI laws and how they relate to MeTA.
“The lesson here is that META needs to be absolutely clear about the pieces of information – the records – that are critical to the dual process of promoting accountability in the pharmaceutical industry and of diagnosing the blockages that prevent poor people from accessing affordable, safe medicine.
MeTA’s biggest challenge may be to identify the precise documents that will unlock the opacity of the supply chain and to then forge consensus about the rules of the game for their disclosure – what must be disclosed, when and how, and to whom.”
Read the whole article here
What Access to Information laws exist in your country?
Have you been able to use them?
Are you able to find ways to use them to increase transparency in the medicines supply chain?
Do you have an experience to share with people in other countries to encourage them in their work?
Thanks for posting this. Richard’s article is very helpful.
I’ve been thinking quite a lot about the links between FOI / ATI and MeTA (and indeed transparency initiatives more broadly). I agree with Richard that having an ATI law in place is not sufficient to facilitate either transparency / good governance or the realization of other rights.
However, I think it does play a critical role in shaping the expectations of citizens and their representatives – particularly the media and community-based organizations – that public institutions and those delivering services on their behalf should be publicly accountable. And, in particular, that information and knowledge amassed through the use of tax revenue should be available to taxpayers / citizens and those acting on their behalf. I.e. this information is a public good.
I also agree with Richard that we need to give some thought, through MeTA, to the kinds of medicines datasets and other information resources that should be publicly available / open. These might include: basic drug registration data – i.e. drug, date registered, manufacturer etc; and, arguably, the results of quality assurance activities undertaken by the national drug regulatory agency, whether at registration or at some other point in the import / wholesale and distribution chain; national budget (allocation and expenditure) on pharmaceuticals, broken down to a reasonable level of detail; results of public tenders, etc. What else?
It would be helpful to compare countries with an ATI law with those that do not have a law, at a later point in MeTA’s implementation, to see whether and how the law may have influenced the extent of data disclosure and usage by different groups.
Emma
At a MeTA-sponsored civil society capacity strengthening workshop that has just finished in Ghana, one of the participants said something that made me stop and think. We were discussing access to information and freedom of information issues and he said the question for him was whether there was a free flow of information in society.
So, yes, the legal instruments help, but if there is no free flow of information, it is always a stop-start process. Someone has to notice that some vital piece of information is missing, then ask for the information, then wait a while so that it can be packaged up for external consumption, and likely, even with a legal instrument in place, there will be some reluctance to let the information go.
If we can move to a point at which information sharing becomes a habit, becomes a way of doing things, the likelihood increases that information that is needed in a society is flowing around the society, making it easier for people to access it.
That, however, does not detract from Richard’s point about the importance of identifying some strategic priorities as to which information, if society had more access to, would most likely enable real dialogue to occur, real policy change to happen, and better practice to take place that improves access to medicines.