Right to Information (GH0025)

What is the public problem that the commitment will address?: The 1992 Constitution of Ghana guarantees to all the right to information, among many other rights. Efforts to pass the Right to Information Bill commenced almost two decades now.; What is the commitment?: The commitment is to pass the Right to Information Bill; How will the commitment contribute to solve the public problem?: The Government undertook to enact a Right to Information (RTI) Law both in the first and second action plan. However, the RTI bill has not been passed. Passing the bill will help address the unfulfilled commitments the two previous action plans. The commitment is also helping to develop strategies for the implementation of the RTI Bill so that when the bill is passed public institutions will be able to provide the necessary information to the public.; Why is this commitment relevant to OGP values?: The commitment is enabling the right to information.

6. Right to Information

Language of the commitment as it appears in the action plan:

‘The Government undertook to enact a Right to Information (RTI) Law both in the first and second action plan. However, the RTI bill has not been passed. Government still recognizes the importance of unfettered access to information in contributing to stability in governance and therefore commits to passing the Right to Information Bill by June 2018.’

Milestones/Activities:

• Parliament to pass RTI bill by June 2018; and,
• Ministry of Information to develop strategies for the implementation of the RTI law by September 2018.

Start Date: November 2017

End Date: September 2018

Action plan is available in this link

Context and Objectives

This commitment is pivotal, as it has bearings on all the other commitments in the current action plan. It aims to pass the Right to Information (RTI) Bill and to create mechanisms to implement it. According to Francis Ametepey, a contributor from Young Reporters for the Environment-Ghana, the absence of implementation of the law implies the lack of mechanisms to require public agencies to publish information. [56] Without the law, citizens are deprived of a means to hold public officials accountable for their actions as civil servants, which may encourage violation of rights and laws. [57] The prolonged lack of a substantive law has stifled citizens’ access to information, allowing corruption to thrive and obstructing popular participation in governance, especially at sub-state/local government levels. It has also contributed to strained relations between the state and civil society.

Ghana began the process of passing an RTI law almost two decades ago in 2002. Successive governments have since acknowledged its importance to governance, yet failed to pass it, ostensibly for several reasons. [58] In separate interviews, Ugonna Ukaigwe, coordinator of the Ghana Civil Society Organizations Platform on the Sustainable Development Goals (GCPS) and consultant with the RTI Coalition, and Regina Amanfo-Tetteh, political scientist and program officer with the Centre for Democratic Development-Ghana, said that the bill has stalled because public officers are afraid of its implications. [59] In their opinion, this reflects a misunderstanding and low awareness of the right to information.

Ugonna, Regina, and Awal Mohammed, program officer for social accountability with the Centre for Democratic Development-Ghana, [60] also highlighted, in separate interviews, the lack of political will as a major obstacle, explaining how several governments have promised to pass it as a form of political horse-trading with an increasingly politically aware citizenry. A third point of contention is disagreements between the state and civil society over some of the bill’s content. For example, the RTI Coalition objects to the special protected status of information from the presidency on grounds that this office is expansive and the protections would block access to critical information. In addition, a 2018 study by the US-based Center for Law and Democracy states that the rules on appeals are contradictory and located in different parts of the bill: section 38 suggests that requesters may appeal directly to the courts in certain cases without going through the Information Commission whereas under section 68(b), requesters must exhaust the right of review before approaching the courts. [61] There is no evidence of whether this contradiction will be solved prior to passing the bill. The NAP 2017–19 thus includes this commitment again in the hope that the bill will finally be passed into law and help address the issues identified above.

This commitment is relevant to the OGP value of access to information, as it seeks to pass a law allowing for greater access to information in the country. Also, the commitment is verifiable in that completion can be seen by checking whether the law on information was approved.

If implemented as written, this commitment contributes to solving the lack of a legal framework allowing citizens to have access to greater information, although not to a full extent. Therefore, the potential impact for this commitment is graded as “moderate.” As RTI activists argue, several aspects of it would need to be reviewed for it to be truly transformative. These aspects include the fact that requesters would have to pay before they access information and that there are exemptions on information deriving from the presidency. [62] This is significant because these exemptions cover some key ministries, including Monitoring and Evaluation, Business Development, Regional Re-organisation, Zongo, and Inner-City Development. Mrs. Amanfo-Tetteh also expressed concern that the bill does not sufficiently integrate subnational government structures, implying that citizens at regional and district levels would have restricted access to information in those contexts. Public officials like K. T. Hammond, member of Parliament for Adansi Asokwa, are deeply resistant to having an RTI law and do not understand why citizens require access to public information. [63] Such people may try to frustrate implementation, but Ugonna Ukaigwe suggests that high levels of civic interest could help enforce action and ensure accountability.

The passage of the law after almost 20 years is measurable and plausible and would be a significant achievement because it is the product of uneasy compromises between the state, civil society actors, and other interested parties (it has evolved in response to diverse feedback over the years). Its passage would reinforce the fundamental right to information by creating a legal obligation for government to provide information within set time frames or face clear sanctions. It would also provide legal backing to citizens' demands for information, which are anticipated to be high, owing to the level of interest in and engagement with the advocacy for the passage of the bill.

Next steps

This commitment covers an important policy area for the country. To facilitate successful implementation, this commitment could consider:

1. Facilitating implementation of this commitment by disaggregating global goals into targeted activities that can be pursued or/and achieved within set time frames. One example, suggested by Ugonna Ukaigwe, would be to set clear targets for how public officials will be prepared to understand how the RTI law would affect them and its broader implications for state-society relations. Although steps like this need not be included in subsequent action plans, they are good practice and can help improve the climate for access to information before the bill is passed. They also signal to civil society that the government is committed to passing the bill.
2. Ensuring effective implementation of this and all other laws and policies in any country so that citizens can fully exercise their right of access to information. Whether the commitment passes or not, the government could work to transform the culture and climate of information access in the country by sensitizing government officials and the public to the right to information and what their respective rights and responsibilities are. Continued and consistent engagement of citizens by the RTI Coalition will help deepen support for the prospective governance benefits of the bill and may help make its passage more feasible.
3. Promoting understanding and dialogue between CSOs and government on sensitive topics where there may be disagreement about the law through workshops, trainings, and forums. This may also include raising awareness among policy makers about the benefits of having access to information in order to reduce skepticism about the changes brought by the law and to promote/enforce political will, if possible. Some advocacy work/campaigning could be beneficial.
4. Mandating government agencies to comply with the RTI and allocating resources to this end.

6. Right to Information

Commitment text: The Government undertook to enact a Right to Information (RTI) Law both in the first and second action plan. However, the RTI bill has not been passed. Government still recognizes the importance of unfettered access to information in contributing to stability in governance and therefore commits to passing the Right to Information Bill by June 2018.

Milestones/Activities:

• Parliament to pass RTI bill by June 2018; and,
• Ministry of Information to develop strategies for the implementation of the RTI law by

September 2018.

Editorial Note: For the full text of Ghana's 2017-2019 Action Plan please see: https://www.opengovpartnership.org/documents/ghana-action-plan-2017-2019/

Carried over from successive action plans, this commitment aimed to pass the Right to Information (RTI) Bill and create mechanisms to implement it. For almost 20 years, the lack of a substantive right-to-information law in Ghana stifled citizens’ access to information, allowing corruption to thrive and obstructing popular participation in governance, especially at subnational and local government levels. ^[58] It also contributed to strained relations between the state and civil society, with the latter having difficulties in holding public officials to account over their reluctance to provide requested information. ^[59]

In a major accomplishment, the Ghanaian government finally passed the RTI Act, 2019 (Act 989) into law in March 2019. ^[60] The Information Minister, Mr. Kojo Nkrumah, said that the government was “preparing a roadmap for the implementation of the RTI law” that would require, inter alia, establishing an RTI Commission and Information Units in all public offices, and recruiting and training Information Officers for those units before January 2020. ^[61] Yet weeks prior to the deadline, a press release by the Media Foundation for West Africa questioned delays in implementing the roadmap and questioned the feasibility of doing so before 2 January 2020. ^[62] In sum, the RTI law was passed, but not immediately implemented due to delays in creating infrastructure and resistance toward information-sharing by some government actors. ^[63]

Intense advocacy by the RTI Coalition of Ghanaian civil society organizations was instrumental to the passage of the RTI Bill. ^[64] The one-year moratorium on implementation may stem from the same reasons that stalled its passage, officials’ fear of the law’s implications and a lack of political will. ^[65] Principal officers of the RTI Commission, the main implementing body, were also not in place by the end of the reporting period. According to the revised “RTI Implementation Roadmap,” [66] the government will appoint RTI commissioners and top staff between June and September 2020, and will open the Commission in August 2020.

This commitment was coded as relevant to access to information. Early indications are that some government entities are implementing the RTI Law, albeit more slowly than expected, according to Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah. ^[67] He attributed this to delays in government funding. ^[68] As noted in Ghana’s 2017−2019 design report, RTI activists have criticized the requirement for payment before the public can access information, noting that it limits access to those who can afford it. ^[69] Despite these challenges, this commitment did introduce critical legislative infrastructure and got some public officials thinking and acting in a more transparent manner. For these reasons, “Did It Open Government” is assessed as marginal. This commitment would have had a greater change if the necessary operational infrastructure been established through the RTI Commission, Information Units, and Information Officers. These RTI institutions would have helped translate the new legislation into concrete improvements in citizens’ ability to access information in Ghana.