The Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII) says the Government has released a first draft of the Freedom of Information (FOI) legislation to civil society for further input by stakeholders before being finalized and presented to Parliament to be passed.

A press release from GII said the Draft FOI released by the Attorney General and Ministry of Justice, has been submitted to the Anti-Corruption lobby through GII for input.

GII in conjunction with the Governance Unit of the Ministry of Justice and the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) will hold a one-day stakeholder meeting at the British Council to discuss the draft bill on December 12th 2002.

A panel of experts from civil society, media, private sector, academia and relevant government agencies will review the draft and return it with suggestions to the Attorney General's office.

GII said the formal referral of the bill to civil society by Government marks a dramatic improvement in the process of consultation and participation of civil society in public policy formulation

It will be recalled that the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) took the initiative and produced a Draft Freedom of Information Bill in 1996, which provided a basis for civil society discussion and advocacy.

In August 2000, the British Council supported GII in collaboration with the International Records Management Trust (IRMT) of the United Kingdom to organize the 'Information for Accountability Workshop', which brought together core policy makers in the Executive, Parliament and Civil Society to forge a consensus about the adoption of FOI. The workshop discussed the IEA draft and made improvements, which were part of material that was later submitted to the Attorney General' office.

In 2001, The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), Africa Office organised and sponsored a bi-monthly Right to Information (RTI) Coalition made up of representatives from stakeholder civil society organizations and government agencies. The Coalition is undertaking a series of educational seminars on RTI with the objective of bringing together a diverse network of civil society actors and policy makers in an effort to firmly place RTI on the national agenda.

As a continuing process, IEA re-launched the Draft Bill in 2001 for further discussion. At the launching, the Attorney General's Office adopted it as working proposal.

GII says the adoption of a bill sponsored by civil society may be regarded as a landmark in Ghanaian legal and constitutional process since it provides a window of opportunity on which private members can build in order to widen the sources from which transparency enhancing legislation may originate.