Public Access information

This is an important week: it marks both International Right to Know Week and the week of the United Nations’ summit for the adoption of the post-2015 development agenda.

Inclusion of this target recognizes that incredible progress has been made on the right to know-over one hundred countries worldwide already have made significant progress towards achieving this target and other countries are actively discussing the passage of access to information laws-and that there is still more work to be done.

In parallel with this process, the UN Inter-Agency and Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goal Indicators (IAEG-SDGs) must establish indicators to measure progress on the SDG targets over the next 15 years.

The World Bank has proposed that 16.10 be measured by the level of implementation of legislative guarantees and mechanisms for public access to information, including but not limited to information pertinent to each and all of the Sustainable Development Goals and protection of fundamental freedoms.

This measure recognizes that not only is it important for countries to establish legislative guarantees, for example by passing right to information laws, but that they need to take steps to effectively implement those laws in order to realize the full potential of the laws as pathways to sustainable development.

Implementation of legislative guarantees of public access is not easily measured, but we believe it can be achieved. Most countries with such laws already have enforcement monitoring systems of some kind, even if weak. We believe these monitoring systems can and should be used as a source of data for this indicator.