Access to Public Information

Access to public information

How to write a request for access to public information and get the desired result

Experts: Alona Chernetska, Oleksii Kabanov, Liudmyla Denisova, +3

Memes and stickers will not work if you want to send a letter to the authority. But there is a solution! You can send a request and an appeal to government agencies and get a response. You can ask anything — almost any information is public.

Watch this short series to find out what information can be shared with you. Sometimes the government cannot tell you everything it knows — this is called confidential or proprietary information. In the series, you will learn how to distinguish between them.

It only takes an hour to learn how to communicate with the state better than with your friends in a messenger!

It was created with the support of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, the National Agency of Ukraine on Civil Service, and the Human Rights for Ukraine project implemented by UNDP in Ukraine and funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark.

Format:

Education series

EKTS:

0.2

Languages:

Ukrainian

Topic:

Open data

Competencies:

Information literacy, ability to work with data

Skills:

Program

Get started

Episode 1 - What is public information?

We are going to tell you what public information is, its features, types and forms. We will learn to understand when information becomes public and in the possession of an authority.

Episode 2 - How is it different from citizens' appeals?

What is the difference between a "request for information" and an "appeal"? How to distinguish one from the other? We understand the difference between the concepts, and we also discuss complicated cases - what to do when a request and an appeal are sent at the same time, what identification is required in each case.

Episode 3 - Relation between the right to personal data protection and access to public information

The proportionality of the concepts of "public information" and "personal data" often leads to misunderstandings among public authorities. In this episode, we'll distinguish between personal data that must be disclosed as part of public information and other data that must be protected, in particular, when the priority of data protection is more important.

Invited experts

Alona Chernetska

Journalist of Channel 24

Oleksii Kabanov

Head of the Department for Respecting the Right to Access to Public Information of the Secretariat of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Commissioner for Human Rights.

Liudmyla Denisova

Commissioner of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine on Human Rights

Oleksandr Yarmak

Rap artist

Partners

United Nations Development Programme in Ukraine

The Government of Denmark