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

accordance with the Federal Law of Administrative Responsibilities of Public Servants. Repeated failures
will be considered ‘serious’ for purposes of sanction (Article 63)
The RTI Law also provides for liability on the same basis if offi cials disclose classifi ed or confi dential
information, one of the few provisions in the Law that is likely to impede the development of a culture of
openness, prompting offi cials to err in favour of secrecy (Article 63). Many right to information laws instead
provide protection to offi cials who disclose information pursuant to the law in good faith.
Promotional Measures
The Mexican RTI Law provides for a number of interesting procedural mechanisms to promote effective
implementation of the right of access. All public bodies must establish a “liaison section”, the analogy
of an information offi cer in some other laws, with a number of duties including to ensure that proactive
publication obligations are respected, to receive and process requests for access and to assist applicants, to
ensure procedures are respected, to propose internal procedures to ensure effi cient handling of requests,
to undertake training, and to keep a record of requests for information and their outcome. These sections
must be established within six months of the law coming into force and they must become operational
within a further six months (Articles 28 and 62, and Transitory Third and Fourth).
The Law also provides for an Information Committee in each agency and entity, with a few exceptions,
composed of a civil servant, the head of the liaison section and the head of the internal oversight body. The
Committee is responsible for coordinating and supervising information activities, establishing information
procedures, overseeing classifi cation, ensuring, along with the liaison section, that documents containing
requested information are found, establishing document maintenance criteria and overseeing their
implementation, and ensuring the provision to IFAI of the information it needs to produce its annual report
(see below) (Articles 29-31).
IFAI has a long list of functions including, in addition to those already noted, interpreting the Law as an
administrative regulation, monitoring implementation of the Law and making recommendations in case
of non-compliance, providing advice to individuals, developing forms for information requests, promoting
training and preparing a simple guide on how to use the Law (Articles 37 and 38).
Article 9 includes a very general rule on record management, providing that agencies and entities must
handle their information, including putting it online, in accordance with regulations promulgated by IFAI.
Article 32 provides that IFAI must cooperate with the General Archive of the Nation to develop “criteria for
cataloguing, categorizing and preserving administrative documents, as well as organizing the archives”.
IFAI is responsible for providing an annual report to Congress, which shall include, at a minimum, “the
number of requests for access to information presented to each agency and entity and their results; agency
response time; the number and outcome of matters attended to by the Institute; the status of denunciations
brought before the internal oversight bodies; and any diffi culties encountered in carrying out the Law.” For
this purpose, it shall issue guidelines to the committees of the different agencies on the information which
they must, pursuant to Article 29(VII), provide to it (Article 39). Other public bodies must prepare their own
reports, along the same lines as is required of IFAI, a copy of which must be provided to IFAI (Article 62).
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