Freedom of Information: A Comparative Legal Survey - Federation of ...

potential to escalate the cost of access considerably. It also means that applicants are somehow made
responsible for the consequences of poor record management by public bodies.
Duty to Publish
The main provision on proactive publication is section 7, which requires a manual to be prepared within
six months of that section coming into force, to be updated at least every two years. The manual shall be
made available ‘as prescribed’ and shall at least contain: a description of the public body and its functions;
the postal address and other contact details of the information offi cer and every deputy information offi cer;
the address of the public body where the public may submit requests for information; a description of the
process for making a request; a description of the subjects on which the body holds information; a notice
(as provided for in section 8, see below) listing the information which is routinely available; a description of
the services the body provides to the public and how to access them; a description of any opportunities the
public has to participate in decision-making; a description of all remedies available to the public; and such
other information as may be prescribed.
This is a respectable list but is otherwise nowhere near as detailed as those found in many of the right
to information laws which have been adopted in recent years. In particular, the idea of just publishing
a manual, as opposed to making a wide range of information available over the Internet, seems unduly
limiting. How this information should be disseminated is, as noted, left up to subsequent regulation.
Section 8 requires public bodies to publish, at least every two years, a description of the categories of
information that are made available on a proactive basis. Section 9 requires public bodies to ensure that
the postal address and other contact details of information offi cers are published in every directory that
is issued for general use. This is useful from the perspective of access to information, although it may be
doubted whether the private address of information offi cers, if that is what is intended, should be made
available.
Exceptions
The RTI Law contains a comprehensive regime of exceptions in Part III. This Part even has its own interpretive
guidelines, in section 23, which essentially preclude provisions from being read in such as way as to limit
other provisions. Section 2(2) sets out two complete exclusions from the ambit of the Law, namely cabinet
records (and records of its committees) and records of court proceedings before the conclusion of the case
to which the records related. Cabinet documents are again protected under section 25, although this latter
provision does at least envisage the minister making rules for disclosure of certain categories of records
– presumably meaning cabinet records – which shall or may be available after seven, fourteen and twenty
one years. It is unclear how these rules will operate in practice.
The Law is unclear as to its relationship with other laws and, in particular, secrecy laws. Presumably
normal rules of interpretation thus apply so that which law will prevail will depends on a number of
different considerations. Like a few other right to information laws, the Ugandan RTI Law is also a secrecy
law, as signalled by the fact that some of the exceptions are mandatory (i.e. offi cials are prohibited from
disclosing the information covered, instead of just being permitted not to disclose it). This is the case
for cabinet records, commercially sensitive and other confi dential third party information, and protection
of individuals against danger, a fair trial and legally privileged information (see below for more detailed
elaboration of these categories). Although there is nothing wrong in principle with this, it can undermine
the message being sent by adoption of the right to information law and it also means that any protection to
offi cers for good faith application of the law (see below under Sanctions and Protections) applies not only
to disclosures but also to the withholding of information (i.e. good faith refusals to disclose information as
protected just as good faith disclosures are).
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