Cebu City Council enacts FOI ordinance

CEBU, Philippines —The Cebu City Council has approved an ordinance operationalizing the freedom of information in the city government.

Authored by outgoing Councilor Eduardo Rama, Jr., the ordinance is entitled, "Freedom of Information Ordinance of Cebu City" or the "FOI Ordinance of 2019."

“The City of Cebu believes in the value of transparency on governance as a matter of constitutional right of the people to access information,” read the measure.

On July 23, 2016, President Rodrigo Duterte issued Executive Order No. 2 entitled “Operationalizing in the Executive Branch the People's Right to Information and the State Policies to Full Public Disclosure and Transparency in the Public Service and Providing Guidelines Therefor.”

“Recognizing the importance of the people's right to government information, and guided by the President's Executive Order, the Cebu City Government deems it necessary to provide a local mechanism for its offices where the people's right to information is respected and upheld, subject to exceptions provided by law, ordinances, and jurisprudence,” the ordinance added.

The ordinance shall cover all government offices under the city government.

Section 5 provides that every Filipino shall have access to information, official public records, or to documents and papers pertaining to official acts, transactions or decisions, as well as government research data used as basis for policy development, in the custody of the city government.

However, access to information shall be denied when the information falls under any of the exceptions enshrined in the Constitution, existing laws, or jurisprudence.

There shall be a legal presumption in favor of access to information, public records, or official records.

No request for information shall be denied unless it clearly falls under any of the exceptions in the inventory of FOI exceptions.

The city government shall adopt the "disclose to one, disclose to all" policy for the information requested through the ordinance and shall exercise proactive disclosure of information not subject to the exceptions.

In providing access to information, public records, or official records, responsible officials shall afford full protection to the right to privacy of the individual pursuant to the Republic Act No. 10173, otherwise known as the "Data Privacy Act of 2012".

Section 9 of the ordinance states that the Public Information Officer is designated to be the FOI Focal Person.

He/she is tasked to oversee the implementation of the Ordinance, and shall also develop the standard forms for submissions of requests and for the proper acknowledgement of such requests.

Government offices shall not charge any fee for accepting requests for access to information.

Likewise, there shall be no charge for obtaining information in digital format such as PDF, JPEG, or other similar formats.

However, there shall be a schedule of fees imposed for printing, photocopying, or certification services rendered by a government office.

For Certification of Official Records, P50 per page for the first copy and P5 for the succeeding copies; printing, P5 per page; photocopying, P3 per page (long), P2 per page (short), P2 per page (A4).

Meanwhile, the denial of request on the access to information shall be in a written form and stating therein the valid reasons for such denial.

The city government, through the Public Information Office, shall routinely upload for public consumption all the records and other documents that are not included in the Local Inventory of FOI Exceptions as provided by the City Legal Office.

Any city government officer or employee who fails to comply with the ordinance without any valid justification shall be penalized.

For first offense, he/she will be reprimanded; second offense, he/she will face suspension of 1-30 days; and third offense, he/she will face dismissal from the service. — GMR (FREEMAN)