Globe International Center NGO has conducted “The baseline survey on awareness of the right to access public information and the FOI law in 20 soums and the Result has been analyzed and now available in the public domain.
Every person has a legally enforceable right to obtain access to public information in accordance with the constitution of Mongolia and the newly adopted Freedom of Information law unless a document is an exempt document under the FOI law, which is disclosure of the document would, or could reasonably be expected to, cause damage to the security and the defense of the nation.
In accordance with the newly adopted Freedom of information law (FOI), the awareness and understanding of citizenry on the FOI law must be raised and empowerment oriented social action has to be done in order to increase the citizens’ capacity to monitor public sector integrity and transparency.
Globe International Center NGO is implementing the project called “Increasing Citizens’ Access to Information to Promote Transparency and Integrity in Mongolia” funded by UNDEF in 20 Soums of 8aimags in strengthening the implementation of the FOI law at national level.
One of the main project activity “Baseline survey” has been conducted and evaluated From January 18 to May 15, 2013. The survey is intended and constructed to measure the level of citizens’ understanding on FOI law, to assess the overall public sector integrity and transparency at local level and the community members’ general understanding on public sector integrity and transparency and to determine the main causes of public service’s poor quality at community level.
“Baseline Survey” methodology has been developed by the RME team leader in sequential consultation with the members of the consultative committee. The data collection has been done with the cooperation of local citizen in 20 Soums. Although the survey was initially conducted among 2000citizens using a questionnaire method, due to the some minor problems in the data collection, the collection of 1948 citizens’ response has been analyzed in the final report.
Result of the survey:
62% of the total respondents know they have a right to access to information, 9% knows the FOI law “very well” or “good”. But there arises discrepancy at a credential level when seeing these citizens’ answers on little more specific questions of FOI law. So the value weight of the 9% respondents decreased. Overall both citizen and public servants lack of knowledge on FOI law. Their understanding of the law is at very poor level. For example; Citizen answered they have an immediate right to access to information of ongoing financial monitoring as well as community mayors only decide through what ways citizen can access to information.
The number of Citizens who made a request of access to information, received public service, made petition in the last one year consists of 21% of total respondents. Due to several factors such as: citizens’ lack of knowledge on legal framework, old mentality of “government money is government’s money” still prevails among citizens, and seeks nepotism as much as possible, there arises an increasing negative connotation of public sector and public officials that contributes heavily to the fact that citizen lose trust in government and rule of law.
Rather than public officials, the structure and organization of public sector itself is the main factor for leaving negative impression among citizens. Because there is not adequate number of ways to disclose public information especially financial information, citizen have suspicion that public servants embezzle government’s money. Moreover, since citizens don’t know for sure to where, whom they can make a request and petition. It makes it difficult to hold a given public officials accountable.
Although it is said that Public officials report their work and activities during public gathering, Local public council and other public officials are not as much transparent as they said they are. Because citizens don’t have direct authority to participate in decision making, the supposed public gathering is usually boring, and the numbers of citizens who participate in the public gathering are at very low level. Therefore the report during public gathering is usually ineffective.
However, more than 50% of the total respondents know Soum mayor and bag mayor report their activity, but the percentage of citizen who knows on what ways, other officials report their activity is not nearly 50%. So it can be concluded that citizen don’t know they have a right to monitor and hold public officials accountable, and it is obvious that they haven’t established any practice to evaluate public sectors’ activity performance and hold public officials accountable.
Using several indicators on a scale of 100 points, Transparency level of public sector in local community is 42%, Integrity level is 51%. It addresses the local necessity to raise the overall public sector’s transparency and integrity.
Although citizen do know they have a right to access to information, they don’t know the existence of the FOI law and how to use it. Moreover the level of interest to get and access to information is high at local level.
The following are the ways in which the information reaches citizen.
The most available information dissemination ways are TV channels and newspaper, friends/ family and acquaintances. At local level, the main information resource is local newspaper, friends/family and acquaintances, public officials.
The use of internet; one of the most powerful ways to disseminate information is not popular at local level. It is due to lack of poor telecommunication infrastructure, life standards of local people.
Although the usage of mobile phones is at high level, due to some constraints of landscape, it’s difficult to reach some of the local citizens using mobile phones.
Citizens want to get information if it is related with legal framework and public sector from public notice board. Politics and other social information on TV, newspaper. Other daily information is on their mobile phones.