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The Voice and the Presidency Will Give Workshops on Access to Public Information

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With the aim of informing municipal officials in Guanacaste about the right of access to public information, The Voice of Guanacaste and the Presidency of Costa Rica will hold workshops about the responsibilities that come with this right in the town halls of Santa Cruz and Liberia.

Ana Gabriel Zúñiga, deputy chief of staff for political affairs and citizen dialogue, will be in charge of leading the workshops that seek to raise awareness among public officials about the importance of transparency in the daily workings of city halls. It will also deepen the understanding of accountability in public operations and the need to promote more citizen participation.  

“What we want is to explain what actions city halls can take to be more effective in complying with the human right of access to to information,” the deputy minister explained. “Complying with the standards for access to information isn’t a gift that institutions gives, it’s a citizen’s right.”

These are the first workshops that will be held in the city halls of Guanacaste as part of the Open City Hall project led by the Presidency and supported by The Voice of Guanacaste.

There will be two working groups, one next Tuesday, November 7 at 2:00pm with the members of the Santa Cruz city council and another on Wednesday November 8 at 5:00pm with members of the Liberia council, as well as a workshop on Wednesday at 1:30pm in Liberia.

In these working groups and the workshop the benefits and opportunities that towns have to be more transparent will be explained in order to achieve greater citizen participation in municipal management and to fight against corruption.

These workshops are necessary for citizens and media outlets like The Voice of Guanacaste that, on three occasions, has filed and won cases against the towns of Santa Cruz and Nicoya because access was denied to public information that was necessary to tell Guanacastecans about the operations of public institutions.

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