Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) continued to promote and recognize the people’s rights to correct information through the implementation of its Freedom of Information (FOI) program.

As a testament to its efforts, DSWD  was among the government agencies which received a special citation from the 2020 FOI Awards of the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) on November 25, 2020.

The special citation recognizes government agencies which continued to provide information by “keeping their channels of information open and active to the public” despite the implementation of community quarantine measures during the pandemic.

All through out the implementation of quarantine measures, the Department was able to process 1,950 FOI requests. Of which, 30.97% were successfully addressed and resolved, 57.78% were invalid due to privacy concerns, and 11.25% are still on-going.

DSWD expressed its gratitude to PCOO and will continue to consistently promote and protect the Filipinos’ right to information through the creation of proactive disclosure mechanisms for information and the conduct of competency building sessions for FOI technical staff. ###