October 05, 2018
VISITORS — Nasrin Sotoudeh (right) poses with her son, Nima, 12, and her daughter, Mehraveh.
President Rohani has made a major initiative of giving the public access to government data, but it turns out that only one-tenth of the government’s agencies are even linked to the official database, and many of them haven’t provided any content for the database.
The Judiciary, intelligence and security organizations, as well as the country’s police force, have all refused to cooperate with the “Freedom of Information Access” (FOIA) database.
The Guardian Council and Expediency Council are among other bodies that decline to give citizens access to unclassified information.
Rohani’s Administration set up the FOIA in July 2017 in a bid to make the government’s activities more transparent, Radio Farda reported. However, critics said the information available in the database is outdated and insignificant.
“There is some burnt-out information there, and very little up-to-date data,” according to Gholam-Ali Jafazadeh Imanabadi, the Majlis deputy from Rasht. “Many people in the government fear transparency.”
The Rohani Administration set up the database “only to tick a box,” Imanabadi told reporters in Tehran, adding, “Nobody checks to see if it really works.”
It took the Majlis eight years to ratify the Freedom of Information Law, and give ordinary Iranians legal access to unclassified information about the government’s activities. The database was designed to put meat on the bones of the law.
Reports say that less than half of the government’s executive organizations and only certain parts of the legislative body are linked to the database and contribute to it. Out of the 11 organizations comprising the Judiciary, only one is linked, and, out of 427 other government, religious and military institutions, only around 40 provide information to the database.
For instance, some of the most significant and influential institutions such as the Guardian Council, Expediency Council, the Friday Prayers Headquarters, the Supreme Council of National Security, the Army and the Pasdaran have refused to put any information onto the system.
The information currently available in the database includes a list of the names of all those who died between 1989 and 2006, a list of international sports competitions that Iranian athletes have taken part in, samples of insurance policies of pilgrims to religious sites in Iraq, Mehr Housing Project purchase contracts, the texts of some laws such as the Press Code and the Municipal Taxes Law, as well as 25 samples of government correspondence.
The total number of Iranians who have signed up with the database from the country’s 31 provinces during the past year is an insignificant 5,100.