Anyone who's had to request information from Lithuanian state institutions would agree that they are not always willing to part with it. Sometimes they give no more than a formal response and sometimes they refuse to give any information whatsoever.

Even journalists often encounter bureaucratic obstacles to access to public information that prevent them from doing their jobs - namely, providing accurate and high-quality information to the public in a timely manner.

45% of Lithuanian residents are unable to obtain information from state institutions

Public opinion surveys in Lithuania indicate that in 45% of all cases, residents requesting official information from state institutions received only a partial or unsatisfactory response, while in 7% of all cases they received no response whatsoever. No less than 44% of all Lithuanian residents believe that currently, the proportion of information not disclosed or publicized by the state is too large.

Even the press, tasked as it is with providing accurate and high-quality information to the public in a timely manner, is not always able to access the information held by state institutions. According to the data from July 2014, the Seimas (Parliament) Ombudsmen's Office received 10 complaints from various media outlets in which journalists claimed that state institutions did not allow them to access the information requested and prevented them from carrying out their professional functions.

New study revealed the need to improve the legislation governing access to information

On October 2, the Human Rights Monitoring Institute presented "The Right of Access to Information: Challenges and Opportunities," the first study of its kind in Lithuania that is intended for institutions that are under a duty to provide information or act as arbiters in disputes over information, as well as the press, non-governmental organizations and Lithuanian residents that want to better understand and protect their right of access to information.

"The laws regulating the right of access to information in Lithuania are now more than a decade old. Since then, there have been important strides forward in the international protection of the right of access to information, and as such the legal regime and institutional practice in Lithuania is not always up to par with latest standards in this field," said HRMI representative Mėta Adutavičiūtė, commenting on the survey.

The survey focuses on the right of the press and civil society organizations to access information that is in the public interest, as well as the right of the public to know this information.

"HRMI has repeatedly encountered institutions that are unwilling to provide information, with the greatest cause for concern being the latter's habit to far too often rely on the exceptions to the access to information - by indicating that the information requested is confidential, of a private nature or unable to be provided for some other reason. In this manner the public actually loses the ability to access this information in any way - even if said information is in the public interest and of public importance," said the HRMI representative. "It is easy to abuse the various exceptions in order to conceal inappropriate or illegal behavior on the part of institutions or officials, which is why it is necessary for both the legislation and the case law to establish appropriate safeguards to prevent this."

One of the main measures proposed is to enshrine the "overriding public interest principle," as set out in the Council of Europe Convention on the Access to Official Information and the Global Principles on National Security and the Right to Information ("the Tshwane Principles"), in national law and to use the harm to the public interest test in resolving disputes concerning any refusal to supply information.