“Six Questions Campaign” on Budget Information

The Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association (ZELA) is currently implementing a 6 months (January 2010 – May 2010) project titled ‘The Six Questions Campaign’. The project is concurrently being implemented in 85 countries and is being supported by the International Budget Partnership (IBP). The aim of the project is to assess how general requests for information are handled by governments across the world. The idea is to ascertain the respect for access to information across various countries. As part of the project, ZELA will attempt to get information by asking government departments six questions related to budgeting on the environmental sector, development aid sector and the health sector in Zimbabwe. The responses to the formal requests for information will be entered into a database along with the actual information provided. This will then allow for an objective assessment of how accessible budgetary information is in Zimbabwe. The information will then be comparatively assessed with other results from all the 85 countries participating in the campaign. The countries involved in the campaign have different access laws in place thereby allowing for learning exchange when the project is complete.