[kictanet] Freedom of Information Training Programme

[Alex Gakuru]

Colleagues;

All conflicts , including World Wars, come to an end some day.
Therefore, our unfortunate ongoings will end sometime for some
reasons one way or the other. I beg your pardon and allow me to
briefly divert to a related but a major post-crisis issue.

A peaceful future is guaranteed in our society when we "seek to
empower the people with the economic, political and social structures
that will prevent them from becoming pawns in a system that sees them
as numbers, commodities and reservoirs of cheap labour, and violence
when needed." Business Daily, 25 January 2008, 'The next movement after
embers die out'

Freedom of Information is the avenue to lasting peace and fairness for
sustained prosperity. The systems for implementation of access to
information held by public entities is greatly boosted by modern
communication media and instruments (or ICTs). I suppose Reclaiming
the future and our national aspirations by engaging ICTs forms the
foundation of kictanet?

The FOI-net coalition appreciates last year's firm confirmation by
Information PS of government support to the enactment of the Freedom
of Information law by the  parliament. We look to kictanet to support
it from policy to operationalisation.

Information benefits will be tremendous to all citizens, the media,
and businesses   alike as they will better plan their economic and
social activities from informed vantage points. For example, feelings
of being "left-out" of official procurement, sharing of national cake,
region development will be minimal if not eliminated. Corruption will
be least where such information is readily available to all citizens.

Towards building this information society, find below information on
upcoming FOI training. There's little time left and sincerely hope the
public officials onlist will pass on this information also to
legislators and any other persons interested.

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Training programme being carried out by Public Administration
International on the 31st of March to the 4th of April in the U.K. The
training is on Freedom of Information: achieving open and transparent
government and the following are the programmes objectives:
1. to explore the purpose and key elements of FOI legislation
2. review infrastructure required to implement the legislation successfully
3. identify benefits and risks
4. confront challenges in achieving and maintaining compliance with the
legislation
5. develop action plans to take forward initiatives in this area
6. discuss the effectiveness of the legislation from the perspective of
the citizen and the media.

For more information visit www.public-admin.co.uk ( Please Note:  they
have other training programmes for those interested.)

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