Executive Director of the Organization for Responsible Governance (ORG) Matthew Aubry said more public engagement and education from the government's commission for the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is needed before the bill is tabled in the House of Assembly sometime in November of this year.

Aubry told Guardian Business yesterday that the number of civil society forces arguing for more time to engage increased from four to 12, and have made more efforts to engage public consultation on the act. While private sector relationships are important, Aubry insisted that there is a lack of engagement from the government to work with civil society groups.

"The government has a great presentation on the work they have done on the 2015 bill, and we would love to use that in public consultation," said Aubry.

"Our goal as civil society organizations is to try to get more people aware of what the issues are and get them connected to the bill... There are few impediments for people to be a part of that dialogue at this stage," said Aubry.

Minister of Education, Science and Technology Jerome Fitzgerald has Cabinet responsibility for the FOIA and the FOIA commission. He told Guardian Business in a previous interview that the bill would require a vast amount of public education, training and the reorganization of ministries as far as standard procedures and resocialization of norms in the public and private sectors.

Fitzgerald also made it clear  that all recommendations from civil society groups would be considered as the bill passes through Parliament, and that the government has used a number of international benchmarks. However, Aubry said there are still more strong international benchmarks to be considered for comparison.

"We would like to collaborate with the government to help facilitate more public consultation," said Aubry.

Efforts are being made to meet with the commission to present a paper surrounding the importance of working together to increase public education, according to Aubry.

The FOIA is a law that gives citizens the right to access certain information from the government.

Although a Freedom of Information Act was passed in 2012, it was never enacted, reportedly based on problems identified in the language of the bill. In May 2015, a new FOIA bill was proposed which was to be tabled in May 2016 and a commission was appointed to review the legislation.

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