Knowledge is power, particularly in the modern world.
To empower citizens with more power, they need detailed knowledge about the activities of their government.
As a result, freedom of information laws have become a prominent feature of many democracies in the world as they provide citizens with the right to request information from government bodies.
The journey towards implementing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in Malaysia has been a long process, with the states of Penang and Selangor having their own right to information enactments since 2010 and 2011, respectively.
It gained national attention when Pakatan Harapan pledged in its 2018 electoral manifesto to join the Open Government Partnership, which requires a federal-level FOIA, and to repeal the Official Secrets Act (OSA).
However, it was deprioritized under the subsequent administrations of former Prime Ministers Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin and Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said in September this year that his administration has agreed in principle to enact a FOIA.
In early November, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Law and Institutional Reform) Azalina Othman Said said the Legal Affairs Division has already started working on a Bill.
According to the division’s Policy and Research director Dr Punitha Silivarajoo, many more steps need to be taken before the Bill can be tabled in Parliament for debate. Based on the timeline they have come up with, the Bill is only expected to show up in the Dewan Rakyat around October or November next year.
Information belongs to the people
Many people live their daily lives without paying much attention to the nitty gritty details of what the government is doing.
But it is undeniable that the government wields great influence over the standards of living and lifestyles of citizens with its legislations and policies.
“It is only when people are informed and consulted will they be able to meaningfully affect their lives,” says Nalini Elumalai, senior programme officer at human rights NGO Article 19.
As citizens who can vote for their preferred ruling party, they must know what the people in charge are doing with the mandate they were given in the election.
Stakeholders such as the media, academicians, lawmakers and civil society can also benefit greatly from the FOIA, as they have various needs for information from the government.
The Legal Affairs Division has already conducted a public survey on the FOIA, which showed that 63% of people support it, according to Punitha.
“We must understand that information belongs to the people,” she says.
But just enacting a FOIA is not enough to create an ecosystem where data transparency can thrive.
Thevesh Thevanathan, chief data scientist at data.gov.my, Malaysia’s open data portal, says a FOIA is “woefully inadequate” at getting data out into the public consciousness.
“That’s because a FOIA depends on requests. You need to make a request to the government. It tends not to be a transparent mechanism.
“If you want to bake transparency into your mechanisms, the government needs to be an automated data publisher,” he clarifies.
