Implementing Right to Information Procedures (MO0026)

CHALLENGE Following the promulgation of the law on the right to access information No. 31.13 and its effective application date on March 12, 2020, several measures have been adopted by public Administrations to ensure its implementation. These measures include the designation of about 1850 information officers, the organization of a training session for trainers, the launch of the access to information portal to facilitate the submission and processing of information requests as well as the generation of appropriate statistics. • Despite these measures and the efforts made by the institutions and bodies concerned, the rate of responsiveness to requests for access to information remains insufficient in quantitative and qualitative terms, and this is due to different reasons, the most important of which are: • Lack of a support and capacity-building mechanism to assist information officers ; • Lack of proactive publication of information as stipulated in article 10 of the 31-13.

PROPOSED SOLUTION This commitment involves putting in place mechanisms aiming to foster the implementation of the right to access to information through : • Implementing a network composed of information officers to exchange experiences, provide expertise and capacity building ; • Setup an online platform to share experiences, expertise and provide assistance to the members of the network ; • Establishment of a unified platform for the proactive publication of information under the national portal of access to information «chafiaya.ma», which will allow access to public information available in institutional sites or through other channels in accordance with Article 10 of Law 31.13 relating to right to access to information.

EXPECTED RESULTS Enable information officers to develop the required skills to process the submitted requests ; • Have a unified portal dedicated to the access to information either proactively or upon request ; • Access to the maximum amount of information through the proactive publication portal without the need to submit an official request to the administration.

PERFORMANCE INDICATORS Progress rate of the online platform development dedicated to the network ; • ▪Number of administrations who have joined the platform of proactive publication.

IMPACT INDICATORS Rate of requests processed via the access to information portal ; • Rate of information published proactively via the access to information portal.

See action plan for milestone activities.

Action Plan Review

Commitment 2. Promoting the implementation of the Right of Access to Information within

ministerial departments and public institutions

● Verifiable: Yes

● Does it have an open government lens? Yes

● Potential for results: Modest

Results Report

Commitment 2. Promoting the implementation of the Right of Access to Information within ministerial departments and public institutions

This commitment aimed to implement the Right of Access to Information, Law 31-13, within ministerial departments and public institutions. The commitment demonstrated substantial completion, including the establishment of a network of information officers (milestone 1) and the organization of a training session for officers (milestone 2). Moreover, the online platform for best practice exchange within the network was developed and launched at redai.chafafiya.ma. Internal procedures for the network governance were also elaborated (milestone 3).

The Head of Innovation and Modernization Programs Division within the Ministry of Digital Transition and Administrative Reform confirmed the development of a new version of the access to information portal, chafafiya.ma, which includes a new module for proactive information publication (milestone 6). The features of the proactive publication platform were shared with network members, and training and assistance were provided to administrations that joined the proactive publication platform. At the time of research for this report, the platform was expected to be launched early 2024. ^[7] The proactive publication module had not been launched by time of finalizing this report in April 2024. The Head of Division noted that the Division is working across administrations to strengthen proactive publication and with the Commission of the Right of Access of Information to address complaints. ^[8]

One implementation challenge was targeting the integration of around 2,100 designated officers responsible for access to information across ministerial departments and public bodies. The ministry is collaborating with the DGCT to integrate local government officials, however this activity remains unfinished. The Head of Division stated that the average processing time of access to information requests as decreased from 52 days in 2022, to 34 days in 2023, to 14 days in 2024. ^[9]

Positive steps were carried out to strengthen the access to information regime in Morocco under this commitment. However, completed activities were internal to the government and had not yet resulted in greater access to information by the end of the implementation period. The launch of the online module for proactive information disclosure promises to increase public access to government-held information in the future. Therefore, while this reform contributed to the foundation for access to information in Morocco, at the time of assessment the commitment had not yet achieved notable results.