Pacific - Principles on Right to

Part of the practical reasoning here is that the State should be able to absorb foreign requests relatively easily and, furthermore, it is a benefit to the State if even non- 3 The RTI Rating, run by the Centre for Law and Democracy, is the world’s leading methodology for assessing the strength of the legal framework for access to information or right to information (RTI) laws. [...] The body should thus have the power to order public authorities to disclose information and to provide applicants with other appropriate remedies, such as to lower the fees for providing information or to respond to a request in a timely manner. [...] Indeed, Article 4(2) of the Indian Right to Information Act specifically calls on public authorities to engage in robust proactive disclosure “so that the public have minimum resort to the use of this Act to obtain information”.8 On the other hand, it does still take time and effort to put documents online and to maintain this information up- to-date, especially in the early days of new obligation. [...] 11 Principles on Right to Information for Small Island Developing States: The Case of the Pacific as a consequence, need to spend a lot of time to locate records which are responsive to requests, this is a massive inefficiency. [...] 13 Principles on Right to Information for Small Island Developing States: The Case of the Pacific Despite this, there are a few practical steps which SIDSs can take to mitigate this challenge, both in terms of the law establishing the right to information and steps taken to implement it.