Electronic Freedom of Information portal now fully operational
Requests for government transparency may have become smoother as the electronic Freedom of Information portal is now fully operational.
In a Facebook post on June 18, the Freedom of Information Program Management Office said that all new FOI requests must be submitted through the eFOI Portal at www.foi.gov.ph.
The office noted that all FOI requests via Google Form before June 19 will continue to be processed by the appropriate agencies after its endorsement, in accordance with the procedures and timelines outlined in Memorandum Circular No. 24-002 of the Presidential Communications Office, the agency that oversees it.
The FOI added that all pending requests submitted to the eFOI Portal before March 20 "will still be processed by the concerned government agencies within 35 working days, without prejudice to eFOI requests received through the Google Form."
The FOI is a program "that allows Filipino citizens to request any information about government transactions and operations, provided that it does not jeopardize privacy or matters of national security." It only covers the government offices in the executive branch.
It was enabled via Executive Order No. 2, series of 2016, under the term of then-president Rodrigo Duterte. Some responses to FOI requests, however, were reportedly slow or never came at all.
In 2023, President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. issued Memorandum Circular No. 15 asking all government agencies to add types of information that may be exempted from public access through FOI.
Since 1992, there have been calls to pass an FOI bill—with refilings in succeeding Congresses—but it never came into fruition.
In the 19th Congress, senators passed Senate Bill No. 2880, or the Peoples Freedom of Information Act, which sought to give all Filipinos access to any information of public concern in the executive, legislative, judicial, and constitutional offices. It also sought to cover local government units, state universities, and government-owned or controlled corporations, as well as back-end government operations, within, between, and across agencies; government-to-government communications, particularly those involving sharing and processing of data and information between and among government agencies for policy, planning, and decision-making purposes; and other government operations.
Department of Budget and Management Sec. Amenah Pangandaman called on incoming lawmakers of the 20th Congress to pass an FOI bill.
