In the first three years of the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the National Institute of Transparency and Access to Information (INAI) received almost 37,000 complaints from citizens dissatisfied with the responses they received to transparency requests sent to federal agencies and institutions. This is the six-year period with the highest annual average of complaints since the transparency system was created.
The red light is the Federal Commission for the Protection of Health Risks (Cofepris), an instance that not only has not responded correctly to most of the requests it receives, but has also ignored approximately 300 resolutions of the INAI in which it instructs it to provide the information. For these facts, complaints have been filed with the Secretariat of the Public Function.
López Obrador’s office, for its part, has accumulated more than 600 complaints of opacity in three years, a figure that already exceeds that of the two previous full six-year terms. Reviews made by the institute show that less than a fifth of the requests sent to the Presidency were answered correctly.
“They’ve been improving in the way they respond, but they started very badly. Beyond the learning curve that exists when a government starts, we believe that there was an issue of attitude or even contempt towards the transparency system. Fortunately, we have made progress, although differences persist in how one obligated subject responds to another, even with respect to the same issue,” Commissioner Óscar Guerra Ford said in an interview.
According to the official data of the institute reviewed by Political Animal, in 2019, the first year of this administration, 13,836 complaints were filed and processed against responses from the different federal instances. For 2020, the year in which the pandemic broke out and there was a partial closure of activities, the complaints addressed and resolved totaled 12,509. Meanwhile, in 2021 the preliminary figure is 10,614 in total (with issues that are still in the process of review)
This is the period in which more complaints have been filed with the Institute. This despite the fact that in 2020 and 2021 the attention of requests (and therefore the presentation of complaints) was reduced due to the different suspensions of activities as a result of the pandemic. Prior to the start of this six-year term, the three years with the most complaints had been 2018 with 10,043, 2016 with 8,769, and 2010 with 8,155.
The INAI data show that in 18% of the complaints presented in the current six-year period, it has been determined that the agency and institution responded correctly, which does not necessarily mean that the information has been provided, but that at least there was an adequate search for it. It is less than one-fifth of the resources reviewed.
On the other hand, in 17,583 complaints resolved, equivalent to 47.5% of the total, the INAI plenary resolved to modify or revoke the response granted by the obligated subjects after concluding that they should have delivered the information requested or, at least, have carried out an exhaustive search for it.
This average of answers revoked with AMLO is higher than that registered in the administration of former President Enrique Peña Nieto where it reached 42%, and significantly higher than that registered in the six-year term of Felipe Calderón where the registration was 31.7%.
Leading dependencies in opacity
In 2021, Cofepris was the obligated subject with the most responses revoked by the INAI plenary of the entire federal public administration: 245 in total. A year earlier, Cofepris had already added 185 review appeals resolved against it, the second highest figure of that year only behind those accumulated by the Mexican Social Security Institute.
Although it is not the largest federal agency or institution, in the INAI they explained that the arrival of the health pandemic and the development of treatments and approval of vaccines brought with it a noticeable increase in the applications submitted to Cofepris, which have not been properly attended by that institution.
The problem goes beyond the initial refusals. Commissioner Guerra Ford explained that Cofepris has not even complied with the resolutions of the INAI plenary session where it is ordered to deliver information that, according to its administrative powers, is in its possession. Faced with this situation, complaints have had to be filed with the Internal Control Body under the Public Function.
“There are more than 300 INAI resolutions that are not complied with by Cofepris. Where it was already resolved that they had to respond to the requests and yet they have not done so or give rvalid mailboxes for this. Without a doubt, these are the champions of non-compliance,” the commissioner said.
Another case that stands out is that of the Office of the Presidency. In 2019, the first year of the six-year term, it was the obligated subject with the highest number of responses revoked by the INAI with 159 in total, to which were added another 103 cases of responses modified by various failures. By 2020, the figure fell to 77 modified or revoked responses, but in 2021 it rebounded again to 121 processes resolved against the Presidency.
The IMSS remains, in general terms, the federal institution with the highest number of complaints filed against it. So far in the López Obrador government, the INAI has revoked 526 incorrect responses to transparency requests, and has modified another 1,340.
It is followed by the ISSSTE, an obligated subject that in the first half of the current six-year term accumulated 558 responses revoked by the PLENARY session of the INAI. In the same health sector, the Federal Ministry of Health registers in the same period 328 appeals resolved against it with the same instruction.
The Attorney General’s Office (FGR) is the autonomous entity that accumulates the largest number of responses to revoked or modified requests with 413 in total from 2019 to 2021. The Ministry of National Defense is the security agency with the greatest problems of opacity since it adds 465 revoked responses to requests sent.
Another federal body with a significant number of complaints is the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE). In the first three years of the six-year term, the INAI commissioners have revoked 324 responses to requests for information from this public company.
Why are complaints growing?
INAI Commissioner Óscar Guerra Ford explained that behind the increase in complaints addressed and resolved during the current six-year term there are several explanations. He stressed that the number of applications sent to federal agencies has increased, which, of course, also has an impact on the increase in complaints filed.
However, the so-called recurrence rate, as it is called the proportion of requests that lead to a complaint to the Institute, has registered an increase in the current six-year term and particularly during the first and second administrations, a situation that shows other types of problems.
“The start of the six-year term was pretty bad. From the beginning we can not rule out that there was a learning curve, of the officials who come to meet these requests and sometimes do not know the area. But we believe that there was also a problem of attitude or even contempt for the INAI. From the beginning there was a position of not answering anything, although this has been changing, “said the commissioner.
Since his morning conferences, President López Obrador has been critical on several occasions of the work of the INAI, even pointing out that he had covered up cases such as Odebrecht in the past (although in reality it is the institute that ordered its declassification). Despite this, Guerra Ford said that the direct relationship with various federal agencies and agencies, and compliance with their transparency obligations, has improved considerably.
He highlighted, for example, the fact that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE) has decided to publish, at the request of the institute, everything related to COVID-19 vaccine contracts. A different position to that of the Ministry of Health that chose to go to court not to release such information.
Another case is of the National Defense with which there has been a constant dialogue for the fulfillment of its obligations, especially in the face of the increase of its functions in the current administration. The commissioner added that thanks to this type of approach, it has already been achieved, for example, that from the following weeks the Felipe Ángeles International Airport becomes an obligatory subject of transparency that must publish its contracts and attend, directly, to the requests that are presented to it.
In contrast, there are instances where significant resistance to data transparency persists. In addition to the already detailed case of Cofepris there are other areas such as the Office of the Presidency itself which, for the most part, does not provide the information that has been requested in the applications.
Political Animal published that the Presidency refused to hand over the data related to the agenda of work meetings held by the president, information that according to the INAI should not have been denied.
“We also have many requests where the data of the statements that the president expresses in his conferences are requested. It is information that the Presidency should have a record of, but the common answer is that it is not they have because it does not correspond to them. In these cases we revoke the response and ask that an exhaustive search of the information be made, or it ends up guiding the person before the dependency that could have that data, “said the commissioner.
What has been better performed by the federal government is in the fulfillment of transparency obligations, that is, the information that the instances are obliged to disclose periodically and without the need to request it. “Their performance has been better in the active part than in the reactive part. The batteries have been put there,” the commissioner said.
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