A year on, the transition is still open
Few reforms are better measured by the passage of time than those that touch institutions. On 20 March 2025 the Mexican Congress approved three laws that, on entering into force the next day, officially dissolved the National Institute for Transparency, Access to Information and Personal Data Protection (INAI). The measure stemmed from the “Organic Simplification” constitutional reform, published on 20 December 2024, which eliminated several autonomous bodies. More than a year later, the replacement still has not fully closed.
What disappeared and what replaces it
INAI was no ordinary body in the democratic framework. Until its elimination it guaranteed two rights — access to public information and personal data protection — held functional and financial autonomy, and its seven commissioners were appointed by the Senate with a two-thirds majority. Its functions were split: access to information went to a new sub-ministerial body, Transparency for the People, and data protection passed to the Anti-Corruption and Good Government Secretariat (SABG); 18 new federal transparency authorities were also envisaged and the number of commissioners was cut from seven to one.
The government itself framed the change in terms of efficiency. The Presidency said the new secretariat would absorb about 80 percent of INAI’s functions with only 35 percent of its structure, and the SABG stated it was ready to take on those tasks and strengthen the security of personal data.
The institutional vacuum
The calendar, however, did not keep up with the design. According to an analysis by the magazine Proceso published in early 2026, the states were required to adapt their constitutions and create new guarantor authorities, but the deadlines were not met and, in practice, the local institutes were wound down before their substitutes were operating. The result, the publication described, is a vacuum that leaves citizens without clarity on which authority is competent when an agency denies information, with a real paralysis of the appeals against denials — the mechanism to challenge a refusal — and a rise in information withholdings, even on sensitive matters.
Two readings
The file admits, once again, two narratives sustained by different sources. On the executive’s side, the reform is a simplification that saves resources and centralizes in a single structure tasks that were previously scattered. On the critical side, the organization R3D warned that the new law does not project the secretariat as a body that gives account, since it removes its obligation to report to Congress, and that the framework missed the chance to set clear data-protection obligations for private parties. Specialists consulted by Mexican outlets added that the new laws did not update matters such as biometric data, artificial intelligence or social-digital networks, and that the regulations due in the months after they took effect were missing.
Why it matters for a data newsroom
The underlying point goes beyond Mexico. Transparency is the precondition for data journalism and accountability: without a guarantor that can order information released and sanction refusals, the right exists on paper but becomes hard to exercise. The question the case leaves open is not whether the new secretariat can carry the 14 million records the National Transparency Platform already hosted, but whether an authority lacking the independence of the body it replaces can compel the very government it answers to to open what it would rather keep closed. That answer, more than a year on, is still being built state by state.