Highlights
- PCOO Undersecretary Kristian Ablan and six officials visited Australia recently to learn best practices in managing and accessing official and public records
- Ablan’s team also travelled to Mexico and Indonesia to understand the fundamentals of organising a commission and forming an alliance with southeast Asian counterparts
- The PCOO will continue working to empower Filipinos to their rights to access information and engage as many stakeholders as possible
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Undersecretary Kristian Ablan and six PCOO officials met with Australian federal and state data agencies in Canberra and Sydney to understand Australia’s Freedom of Information (FOI) system and adopt the best-in-class models and inform data sharing policies in the Philippines.
Undersecretary Ablan said their Australia trip aims to learn the strong transparency and disclosure policies, particularly the recently legislated Data Availability and Transparency Act 2022.
Ablan’s team met with officials from the Office of the National Data Commission, National Archives of Australia, the Department of Foreign Affairs, and the Information and Privacy Commission in New South Wales.
Here they learned Australia’s FOI mechanisms, with a focus on strong access and transparency.
PCOO Usec. Kristian Ablan, Hennesy Ozawa, John Jimenez, Carla Serut, Dianne Gammad, Justice Gatpyat, and Shannah Arnidoval at the National Archives of Australia Source: Kristian Ablan
Undersecretary Ablan said the meetings with Australian offices will help their team improve the FOI service delivery in the Philippines and make government documents more accessible to the public including Filipino migrant workers, researchers, students, and the media.
“The opportunity to learn from Australia is beneficial for the Philippine government to make our access to information more freely,” Ablan shared.
“Our Office has started drafting policies for intergovernmental data sharing between Philippine agencies to help improve policy making.”
The Philippine FOI officials met with the Australian Information Commissioner Angelene Falk, Data Commissioner Gayle Mines and New South Wales Information Commissioner Elizabeth Tydd. They discuss data management policies and challenges Australia and the Philippines encounter in handling data.
Ablan’s team had also been to Mexico and Indonesia, countries with strong access to information policies. Their visit to Mexico centred on how to organise an alliance with other countries while the Indonesian trip’s purpose was to learn the fundamentals of building a commission.
Undersecretary Ablan with Australia's Data Commissioner Gayle Mines Source: Kristian Ablan
“The learnings from our study trips are put into policies immediately, aiming for a quicker and more transparent processing of FOI requests,” Ablan said.
“The Philippine government also aims to build and lead a network of FOI offices in Southeast Asia, with a draft agreement ready to be signed this month.”
The undersecretary is cognisant that FOI is a subject matter not known to many Filipinos, but his Office wants to change the culture of ‘not asking’ and be aggressive in policy development and training.
PCOO FOI delegation at the Information and Privacy Commission in New South Wales Source: Kristian Ablan
“The PCOO would like to continue empowering Filipinos to their rights to access information and engage as many stakeholders as possible.”
For Filipino citizens residing overseas who would like to access information from any Philippine government agencies, you can do so by lodging your request through foi.gov.ph
The Philippine FOI program allows Filipinos to request official and public records about government transactions and operations provided that the release of such information doesn’t compromise the country’s national security.
