On May 16th 2012, Brazil saw its Freedom of Information Law come into force. The text, approved by the Brazilian Congress after intense advocacy by civil society (mainly Abraji and the Right of Access to Public Information Forum), is one of the most comprehensive of the world. It includes municipalities, states and federal government and involves Judiciary, Executive and Legislative aspects. According to the text, most information must be made public in the Internet in computer-friendly format. The text also details the few exceptions to the new general instruction of transparency. But in many of Brazil’s more than 5.5 thousand cities, the public administration has shown resistance to respecting the law, either by fear or for lack of resources at the local level. Since the law came into force, Brazil has also seen some professional categories trying to include salaries and other allegedly personal information in the exceptions of the law, with strong risk to its effectiveness. Besides these well-known aspects of the text, there is also the possibility that some information is not produced, saved and/or released because of lack of requests.

The present project aims to train journalists on how to use the freedom of information law, fill in requirements, demand that data is published on-line and if needed denounce the opacity of some public entities. In countries like Mexico, which also only recently approved its FoIA, press plays a major role in requiring and offering public information to society. The objective is for Brazilian press from all over the country to act both locally and nationally to constrain public actors to make information public. This project will follow up a previous project supported by IPDC. At that stage the law had not yet came into force, therefore the training offered focused only on the concept of access of information and transparency. The current project will focus on the particularities of the policy developed by the government which is being implemented since May, 2012.