Pasig City has become the first local government to partner with the Philippines' Freedom of Information body, as Mayor Vico Sotto carried on with his crusade for transparency in government that he started when he was councilor, FOI Philippines said.
Sotto's government and FOI Philippines joined forces for the FOI Library Project, which "aims to strengthen the utilization of FOI as a platform to access government information, data, records, and documents among citizens."
Freedom of Information mechanisms allow ordinary citizens to request information from government offices, which can be used as a safeguard against corruption.
In 2018, Sotto authored the first local version of the FOI law in Metro Manila when he was still a city councilor. As per the Pasig Transparency Mechanism Ordinance, Pasig residents can access and request for copies of public documents, which must be released by the city government within 10 days.