Law No. 27806 on Transparency and Access to Public Information

Ministry of Education
Republic of Peru
Decade of Inclusive Education 2003-2012
Year of the Centenary of Machu Picchu for the World 14 September 2011 Law on Transparency and Access to Public Information LEGISLATIVE BRANCH LAW NO. 27806 THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC WHEREAS:
The Congress of the Republic has enacted the following Law:
THE CONGRESS OF THE REPUBLIC;
Has enacted the following Law:

TITLE I
GENERAL PROVISIONS

Article 1st.- Scope of the Law
This Law aims to promote the transparency of State acts and regulate the fundamental right of access to information enshrined in numeral 5 of Article 2° of the Political Constitution of Peru.
The right of access to information of Congressmen of the Republic is governed by the provisions of the Political Constitution of Peru and the Rules of Congress.

Article 2nd.- Entities of the Public Administration
For the purposes of this Law, entities of the Public Administration are those indicated in Article I of the Preliminary Title of Law No. 27444, the General Administrative Procedure Law.
The Armed Forces and the National Police of Peru respond to information requests through the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of the Interior, respectively.

Article 3rd.- Principle of Publicity
All activities and provisions of the entities covered by this Law are subject to the principle of publicity.
Officials responsible for providing the information corresponding to their area of competence must ensure adequate infrastructure, as well as the organization, systematization, and publication of the information referred to in this Law.
Consequently:
All information held by the State is presumed public, except for the exceptions expressly provided for in Article 15° of this Law.
The State adopts basic measures to guarantee and promote transparency in the actions of entities of the Public Administration.
The State has the obligation to deliver the information demanded by persons in application of the principle of publicity.
The public entity shall designate the official responsible for delivering the requested information.

Article 4th.- Responsibilities and Sanctions
All entities of the Public Administration are obliged to comply with what is stipulated in this regulation.
Officials or public servants who fail to comply with the provisions referred to in this Law will be sanctioned for the commission of a serious offense, and may even be criminally prosecuted for the crime of Abuse of Authority referred to in Article 377° of the Penal Code. The compliance with this provision shall not give rise to reprisals against the officials responsible for delivering the requested information.

TITLE II
TRANSPARENCY PORTAL

Article 5th.- Publication on the portals of public departments
Entities of the Public Administration shall progressively establish, according to their budget, the dissemination via Internet of the following information:
General data of the entity of the Public Administration, which shall mainly include the provisions and communications issued, its organization, organizational chart, and procedures.
The acquisitions of goods and services that they carry out.
The publication shall include the detail of the amounts committed, the suppliers, the quantity and quality of goods and services acquired.
Additional information that the entity considers pertinent.
The provisions of this article do not exempt from the obligation referred to in Title IV of this Law regarding the publication of information on public finances.
The public entity must identify the official responsible for the preparation of the Internet portals.

Article 6th.- Of the Implementation Deadlines
Public entities must have internet portals within the following deadlines:
a) Central Government entities, autonomous and decentralized agencies, from July 1, 2003. b) Regional Governments, up to one year after their installation. c) Local Governments and decentralized agencies at the provincial and district level, up to three years counted from the validity of this norm, and provided that there are technical possibilities in the place. The authorities in charge of formulating the budgets shall take these deadlines into account in the allocation of the corresponding resources.

TITLE III
ACCESS TO PUBLIC INFORMATION OF THE STATE

Article 7th.- Legitimation and Unmotivated Request
Any person has the right to request and receive information from any entity of the Public Administration. In no case is an expression of cause required for the exercise of this right.

Article 8th.- Entities Obligated to Inform
The entities obliged to provide information are those indicated in Article 2° of this Law.
Such entities shall identify, under the responsibility of their highest representative, the official responsible for providing the information requested by virtue of this law. In case this official has not been designated, the administrative and penal responsibilities shall fall on the general secretary of the institution or whoever acts in their place.

Article 9th.- Legal persons subject to the private regime that provide public services
Legal persons subject to the private regime described in clause 8 of Article I of the Preliminary Title of Law No. 27444 that manage public services or exercise administrative functions of the public sector under any modality, are only obliged to facilitate information referred to the provision of the same to their respective supervisory bodies, for the purposes that these can comply with the obligations established in this Law. When the legal persons referred to in the previous paragraph are not in a position to satisfy certain requirements and requests for the use, enjoyment, or installation of said services, they must inform in writing to the applicants who made the request also in writing, regarding the policy, technical, or economic grounds, as well as the existing limitations and their causes. They are also obliged to supply the information and offer the necessary written explanations to users who so require, in relation to the service tariff applied to them.

Article 10th.- Information of Public Access
Entities of the Public Administration have the obligation to provide the required information if it refers to that contained in written documents, photographs, recordings, magnetic or digital media, or in any other format, provided that it has been created or obtained by them or that it is in their possession or under their control. Likewise, for the purposes of this Law, any type of documentation financed by the public budget that serves as a basis for a decision of an administrative nature, as well as the minutes of official meetings, is considered public information.

Article 11th.- Procedure
Access to public information is subject to the following procedure:
a) Any request for information must be addressed to the official designated by the entity of the Public Administration to perform this task. In case this official has not been designated, the request is addressed to the official who has the required information in their possession or to the immediate superior. b) The entity of the Public Administration to which the request for information has been presented must grant it within a period not exceeding 7 (seven) business days; this period may be exceptionally extended by five (5) additional business days, if circumstances make it unusually difficult to gather the requested information. In this case, the entity must communicate in writing, before the expiration of the first period, the reasons for which it will use such an extension. In the event that the entity of the Public Administration does not possess the requested information and knows its location and destination, this circumstance must be brought to the attention of the applicant. c) The denial of access to information is subject to what is provided in the second paragraph of Article 13° of this Law. d) If there is no response within the periods provided in clause b), the applicant may consider their request denied. e) In the cases indicated in clauses c) and d) of this article, the applicant may consider their request denied for the purposes of exhausting the administrative route, unless the request was sent to an organ subject to higher hierarchy, in which case they must file an appeal to exhaust it. f) If the appeal is resolved negatively, or the corresponding entity does not pronounce itself within a period of ten (10) business days from the presentation of the resource, the applicant may consider the administrative route exhausted. g) Having exhausted the administrative route, the applicant who did not obtain the required information may choose to initiate the contentious administrative process, in accordance with what is indicated in Law No. 27584 or opt for the constitutional process of Habeas Data, according to what is indicated by Law No. 26301.

Article 12th.- Direct Access
Without prejudice to what is provided in the previous article, entities of the Public Administration will allow applicants direct and immediate access to public information during public service hours.

Article 13th.- Denial of Access
The entity of the Public Administration to which information is requested cannot deny it based on the identity of the applicant.
The denial of access to the requested information must be duly justified in the exceptions of Article 15° of this Law, expressly and in writing stating the reasons for which those exceptions are applied and the period for which such impediment will be prolonged.
The request for information does not imply the obligation of entities of the Public Administration to create or produce information that they do not have or are not obliged to have at the time the request is made. In this case, the entity of the Public Administration must communicate in writing that the denial of the request is due to the non-existence of data in their possession regarding the requested information. This Law also does not allow applicants to demand that entities carry out evaluations or analyses of the information they possess. If the information request has not been satisfied or if the response has been ambiguous, it will be considered that there was a tacit refusal to provide it.

Article 14th.- Responsibilities
The public official responsible for providing information who arbitrarily obstructs the applicant's access to the required information, or provides it incompletely or obstructs in any way the compliance with this Law, will be subject to the provisions of Article 4° of this Law.

Article 15th.- Exceptions to the Exercise of the Right
The right of access to public information cannot be exercised regarding the following:
a) Information expressly classified as secret and strictly secret through an agreement adopted by the majority of the legal number of members of the Council of Ministers. The agreement must be based on reasons of national security in accordance with Article 163° of the Political Constitution of Peru and have as its fundamental basis the guarantee of the security of persons. Likewise, for reasons of national security, information classified in the military sphere, both on the external and internal front, is that whose revelation would originate risk for territorial integrity and/or the subsistence of the democratic system. By Supreme Decree approved by the majority of the legal number of members of the Council of Ministers, the Executive Power will regulate the exceptions that expressly fall within the present article. The agreement must be recorded in writing and in it the reasons for which the mentioned classification occurs must be explained. This agreement must be reviewed every five (5) years for the purpose of evaluating its declassification. The agreement that disposes the continuation of the secret and strictly secret character must be duly motivated and subject to the same rules that govern the initial agreement. Information related to the violation of human rights or the Geneva Conventions of 1949 carried out under any circumstances, by any person, will not be considered classified information. The President of the Council of Ministers must report to the Commission of National Defense, Internal Order and Intelligence of Congress on the criteria that the Council has used in the classification of information as secret or strictly secret. Once the classified information becomes public, a special commission of the Congress of the Republic will evaluate whether the reasons cited in the agreement of the Council of Ministers that declared information as classified were adequate to the reality of the facts. This does not prevent a competent commission of the Congress of the Republic from carrying out such evaluation at any time. b) Matters whose public knowledge could affect the interests of the country in international negotiations or dealings. c) Information protected by banking, tax, commercial, industrial, technological, and stock exchange secrecy. d) Internal information of entities of the Public Administration or communications between them that contain advice, recommendations, or opinions produced as part of the deliberative and consultative process prior to the taking of a government decision. Once the decision is taken, this exception ceases if the entity of the Public Administration chooses to expressly refer to those advice, recommendations, or opinions. e) Information prepared or obtained by legal advisors or lawyers of entities of the Public Administration whose publicity could reveal the strategy to be adopted in the processing or defense in an administrative or judicial process, or of any type of information protected by the
professional secrecy that the lawyer must keep regarding their advisee. f) Information linked to ongoing investigations referred to the exercise of the sanctioning power of the Public Administration, in which case the exclusion of access ends when the resolution that ends the procedure becomes final or when more than 6 (six) months have passed since the administrative sanctioning procedure began, without a final resolution having been issued. g) Information whose purpose is to prevent and repress crime in the country and whose revelation could hinder it. h) Information referring to personal data whose publicity constitutes an invasion of personal and family intimacy. Information referring to personal health is considered included within personal intimacy. i) Those matters whose access is expressly excepted by the Constitution, or by a Law approved by the Congress of the Republic. The cases established in this article are the only ones in which the right to access public information can be limited, so they must be interpreted restrictively as they constitute a limitation on a fundamental right. No exception to this Law can be established by a norm of lower hierarchy. The information contained in the exceptions indicated in this article is accessible to the Congress of the Republic, the Judicial Power, and the Public Ministry, with the limitations indicated by the Political Constitution of Peru in both cases. For these purposes, the Congress of the Republic is also subject to the limitations indicated by its Rules. Regarding the Judicial Power, according to the regulations governing its functioning, only the judge exercising their jurisdictional attributes in a specific case and whose information is indispensable to arrive at the truth, can request the information referred to in any of the exceptions contained in this article.

Article 16th.- Partial Information
In case a document contains, in part, information that, according to Article 14° of this Law, is not of public access, the entity of the Public Administration must allow access to the available information of the document.

Article 17th.- Applicable Fee
The applicant who requires the information must pay the amount corresponding to the costs of reproduction of the required information.
The amount of the fee must appear in the Single Text of Administrative Procedures (TUPA) of each entity of the Public Administration.
Any additional cost will be understood as a restriction to the exercise of the right regulated by this Law, applying the corresponding sanctions.

Article 18th.- Conservation of Information
In no case can the entity of the Public Administration destroy the information it possesses.
The entity of the Public Administration must send to the National Archive the information in its possession, within the periods stipulated by the Law on the matter.
The National Archive may destroy information that has no public utility, when a reasonable period has elapsed during which such information has not been requested and in accordance with the regulations by which the National Archive is governed.

Article 19th.- Annual Report to the Congress of the Republic
The Presidency of the Council of Ministers sends an annual report to the Congress of the Republic in which it reports on the information requests attended and not attended.
For the purposes of what is indicated in the previous paragraph, the Presidency of the Council of Ministers is in charge of gathering from all entities of the Public Administration the information referred to in the previous paragraph.

TITLE IV
TRANSPARENCY ON THE MANAGEMENT OF PUBLIC FINANCES

Article 20th.- Object
This title has as its fundamental object to grant greater transparency to the management of Public Finances, through the creation of mechanisms to access fiscal information, so that citizens can exercise supervision over Public Finances and allow adequate accountability. The present title uses the terms indicated below:
a) Public finance information: that information referred to budgetary, financial, and accounting matters of the Public Sector. b) Tax Expenditure: refers to exemptions of the tax base, authorized deductions of gross income, tax credits deducted from taxes to be paid, deductions of tax rates, and deferred taxes. c) General Government and Consolidated Public Sector: The definitions established in Law No. 27245, Law on Fiscal Prudence and Transparency, will be used.

Article 21st.- Publication Mechanisms and Methodology
The publication of the information referred to in this regulation may be carried out through the Internet portals of the entities, or through the newspapers of greatest circulation in the localities where they are located, as well as through other means according to the infrastructure of the locality. The regulation will establish the dissemination mechanisms in those localities where the number of inhabitants does not justify publication by these means. The methodology and denominations used in the preparation of the information must be expressly published, in order to allow an appropriate analysis of the information. When this regulation provides that the information must be disseminated quarterly, it must be published within thirty (30) calendar days following the end of each quarter, and for comparison purposes, it will include the information of the two previous periods.

CHAPTER I
PUBLICATION OF INFORMATION ON PUBLIC FINANCES

Article 22nd.- Information that all Entities of the Public Administration must publish
Every Entity of the Public Administration will publish, quarterly, the following:

1. Its Budget, specifying: income, expenses, financing, and operational results in accordance with the current budget classifiers.
2. Public investment projects in execution, specifying: the total project budget, the budget of the corresponding period and its level of execution, and the accumulated budget.
3. Information on its personnel specifying: active personnel and, if applicable, passive personnel, number of officials, executives, professionals, technicians, auxiliaries, whether they are appointed or contracted for a period greater than three (3) months within a year, regardless of the labor regime to which they are subject, or the budget denomination or position they hold; salary range by category and the total expenditure on remuneration, bonuses, and any other concept of a remunerative nature, whether pensionable or not.
4. Information contained in the Registry of selection processes for contracting and acquisitions, specifying: reference values, names of contractors, contract amounts, penalties and sanctions, and final cost, if applicable.
5. The progress made in the performance indicators established in the institutional strategic plans or in the indicators that will be applied to them, in the case of entities that have signed Management Agreements.
   Entities of the Public Administration are obliged to send the aforementioned information to the Ministry of Economy and Finance, so that it includes it in its internet portal, within five (5) calendar days following its publication.

Article 23rd.- Information that the Ministry of Economy and Finance must publish
The Ministry of Economy and Finance will publish, in addition to what is established in the previous article, the following information:

1. The Balance of the Consolidated Public Sector, within ninety (90) calendar days of the end of the fiscal year, together with the balances of the two previous fiscal years.
2. The income and expenses of the Central Government and Decentralized Instances included in the Public Sector Budget Law, in accordance with the current Income, Expenses, and Financing Classifiers, quarterly, including: the annual budget and the accrued, according to the following criteria (i) institutional identification; (ii) functional classifier (function/program); (iii) by generic expense; and (iv) by source of financing.
3. The projects of the Law on Indebtedness, Financial Equilibrium, and Budget and its statement of motives, within the first two (2) business days of September, including: general tables on use and sources and functional distribution by generic expense and institutional, at the agency level.
4. Detailed information on the balance and profile of external and internal public debt contracted or guaranteed by the Consolidated Public Sector, quarterly, including: the type of creditor, the amount, the p

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