PUBLIC ACCESS TO INFORMATION & ICTs PHASE II REPORT Georgia

Abstract

The executive summary overviews the short descriptions of the characteristics of the country in terms of Geography, economic, political, and social situations in the country preceded by a short history of the latest decades. Special focus is made on the situation regarding public access to information, spread level and usage of ICT infrastructure throughout the country. The summary also covers main inequity variables that affect access to information. The principal information needs of the population of Georgia are defined, distinguishing those of the communities that are perceived as underserved according to the identified inequity variables. We discuss the reasons for selecting Public libraries, The National Library of the Parliament of Georgia, and Internet cafes as the main venue types providing public access to information, proceeding with short description of situation regarding each of the types and the contribution they nowadays make to informing different categories of population. The summary also covers the description of the research methodology: in‐depth interviews with key informants, FGD, site visits, literature review, and user survey. The methodology description comprises the respondents’ selection criteria and procedures for user survey, recruiting participants for FGD for qualitative part of the project and venues for site visits. Special attention is paid to interpreting survey results and the extent they should be generalized to the whole country. The further parts of the extended summary present the main findings about the existed situation in the studied field and provides recommendations and opportunities on improving public access to information specially in each venue types and in the country in general. 1.3 Country Overview