Portal to ease access to information

Media practitioners and members of the public will nolonger find it hard to access information from public offices following the building of a web portal by local NGOs to help enforce the access to information law. The law, which came into force in February 2013, instructs public officials to avail information to the public whenever requested to do so. The new web portal, (https://www.sobanukirwa.rw/), to be launched on February 11, will make it easier to submit inquiries straight to information officers via the internet. The website, sobanukirwa, makes all information requests and replies from information officers public on the internet, making it easier for anyone to search for public information which has been requested and released. Sobanukirwa is translated into English, French and Kinyarwanda so that the website is useful to everyone in Rwanda. “The existence of the law is not enough without implementation of what is stipulated in it. The advantage in this is that people also get to know their right to information and where to find particular information they want,” said Fredrick Akaranganwa, the Head of Programme at Open Democracy and Sustainable Development Initiative (Odesudi). The portal was built by two local organisations Odesudi and Tumenye, a Kigali-based civic technology organisation. The team created a database of all the information officers in Rwanda and used it to create Sobanukirwa. “Since the Office of the Ombudsman is in charge of monitoring the execution of access to information law, they can monitor how communication officers are responding to public requests on this portal,” Akaranganwa said. editorial@newtimes.co.rw

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Portal to ease access to information