Fifteen members of the Organization of American States (OAS) have laws regarding access to public information, but only a handful have tried to implement these laws in their countries.
In early 2009, the OAS mandated its Secretariat for Legal Affairs/Department of International Law (SLA/DIL) to draft a Model Law on Access to Public Information and Implementation Guide to serve as an example for member states to legislate access to public information in their own countries.
When the SLA/DIL first convened a group of experts—including the Open Society Justice Initiative—to help draft the model law, the only civil society representatives involved in the discussion were from the United States and Canada, and all discussion was held in English. The Trust for the Americas and the Regional Alliance for Freedom of Expression and Access to Information (Alianza Regional por la Libertad de Expresión e Información), with support from the Open Society Latin America Program, recognized the deficiency and worked with the SLA/DIL to improve the process.
They arranged for translation services, suggested civil society and government experts from the 19 Spanish-speaking member states, and generated regional discussions among the greater Latin American transparency community that influenced later reviews. The Model Law and Implementation Guide were approved by the Permanent Council of the OAS in June 2010.
By holding discussions in both Spanish and English, more states and experts were able to participate in the debate on the Model Law and Implementation Guide. This inclusion has given both civil society and governments in Latin America more of a stake in the model law, thereby giving all parties a stronger incentive to implement access to information laws in each of their home countries.