How Do Access to Information and Freedom of Information Laws Affect the State's Ability to Govern - Essay Example

How do ATI (Access to Information FOI (Freedom of Information) laws affect the s ability to govern Introduction Access to Information is theright of the individuals in the state access to information held by officers and executives of the government. In the simplest form, this is the right of any person to ask for information from the government without providing any reasons whatsoever for why it is required. This has brought in the transparency of the system afore. This is expected to provide the real reasons behind some of the governmental decisions. Access to information is also known as freedom of information (FOI), right of access, right to know and open records. It has been implemented in most part of the world and most of the states are becoming more and more transparent to the people. Globalization has ensured that ideas, goods, information, capital and people are moving across the nations. Local concepts and ideas are quickly made global in this era of globalization. This law is the result of socio-economic and technological forces that has made the government to be more responsive. This has been created and supported because of the ongoing export and import of knowledge across the countries. Shared assumptions and beliefs help in solving the problem at hand. While all these are the reasons for bringing in the Access to information law in many of the countries across the world, it is good to analyze the reasons behind forming this law and whether the law has achieved what it set out to do. The major objective of this exercise was to make the government more trustable (Heald & Hood 2006). This report presents the analysis and the outcome of this analysis towards this target by the government. Transparency in Governance One of the major reasons for the introduction of FOI by most of the countries is to bring in transparency in governance. Most of the governments are able to get away with moderate or low performance levels because they are not being transparent. When the government becomes transparent in its work, people of the country will be able to ensure that the government works efficiently. This would also ensure service delivery of appropriate standards. There will also be a greater understanding of the governmental decisions and the reasons behind specific actions. On many occasions such decisions and the reasons behind such decisions are largely hidden. This would bring about a condition of superiority or alienation of the public resulting in large scale discontent with the government over a period of time (Colin Bennett Aug 2001). On the contrary, with the increase in transparency levels of the operation of the government, people get to know the reasons behind their actions. This results in better understanding and appreciation. This would ensure that the government decision making is open for comments and public evaluation. Therefore, the executives of the government would tend to make reasonably accurate decisions which would also ensure that the government operates efficiently catering to the needs of the people more closely. This in turn, would build confidence in the government and public trust. In a broader sense, the government becomes more accountable. All this is made possible by the transparency of governance brought about by this law. Therefore, this forms the major purpose of the act. The transparency in administration and governance is a natural progression in the civil rights over the centuries (Leone & Anrig 2003). With the improvement in the technological frontier and the extent of improvement in the communication has resulted in an increased reason to go for large scale transparency in governance. The impact of information and communication technology in the way information is shared has been profound. This has led to more ways by which people are able to access information. The number of sources has drastically increased. The interactions between people have also grossly increased. It has become cheaper to interact than what it was earlier. An NGO is able to send mails or information across to the people concerned at no cost multiple numbers of times. The nature of information shared is also wide. Videos, audios, text or graphics are all shared between the people and the government much more easily. All this adds to the increased transparency in governmental organisations and their operations. Information flow in eGovernance models take up multiple styles and modelling types to enhance information flow and access in the society (Chapman, R.A. & Hunt, M., 2006). Usage of ATI The primary purpose of the access to information is to provide information to individuals from other individuals, institutions and public domains. Since information flow in some of the societies is restricted, this law becomes all the more important. Public tend to use ATI for the following reasons (Jenkins, R. & Goetz, A 1999): 1. Individuals are more interested in the possibility of an employment with the government and government bodies. They would like to know the hiring practices the governmental organisations have. Most of the individual requirements tend towards this usage and they would like to be successful in getting hired. Towards this end, they gather information using this act from the government agency they are interested in. 2. The other set of interest for individuals is the local happenings and events. Public would like to know what is happening to their locality. When a specific road work will be taken up Or when a new road will be laid Or when a water work will be taken up for repairing or how much is being spent for local improvement Needs of this kind are the normal queries raised by individuals on their own locality. 3. Individuals show interest in knowing about their 'group' or 'community' or 'race'. They would like to know what extent their community is growing; whether any specific law is made for or against their community. Helping them in building a stronger and more resilient public presence. Race specific activities and community specific activities attract the attention of people belonging to that specific community. 4. In the case of businesses, the law is used to understand the procurement policies of the government and various government bodies. Businesses would like to do business or be a vendor to government agencies or bodies. To this end, they generally try to understand their tendering and procurement processes. This would also help them in understanding their competition; both in terms of the products that they supply and in terms of financial standing. 5. Most of the information gathering by businesses using this law is towards making the public organisations as a client. 6. The Media industry is specifically interested in the news worthy information that might exist across the government (Rosenbaum 2004). They normally scout for information and see if any of these would help them make a mileage out of it. Most of the media industries try to capitalise on this law in spotting and gathering information of interest for them and for the public consumption. 7. They also use the law to help them gather specific information based on a source so that they can fill up any gap in the information that they have. Figure 1: Usage of ATI Figure 1 shows that the usage of ATI spans a number of public interests. However, most of the usage centres on costs or expenses and the institutional rules and procedures. These two make more than 50% of the total usage of the act. More over, the other area of interest is the performance measures specific to public organisations. This shows clear interest from the people to know and to judge public services and the extent to which they really provide public service to the people. Access to Information aimed at providing critical information to deserving people. However, on more than one occasion, the act gets misused. One such usage is to know the number of eligible bachelors in the Hampshire Constabulary. Simple reason for the request is that the person 'likes the men in uniform'. On many such occasions, the government time is fretted away by such jobs. ATI and Trust in the State ATI is the means by which people are able to exercise more control on the happenings in a government organisation. This also saves on favouritism and on unethical practices that could bring down the service levels in the governance. 'One good custom could corrupt the world'. Even if the intention of the government and the people in the government were good and they are aimed at producing the best results for the good of the people, there is always a possibility that the entire process could get corrupted over a period of time (Birkinshaw 2006). This can be monitored and controlled effectively only by people who are directly benefiting or hurt by their actions. ATI helps the people or the public to realise whether the actions of the government is in consonance with the law of the land. This is the reason why most of the well meaning countries across the world have already implemented the ATI and the usage of ATI is growing in most of the countries. This would make the public know about the happenings in the government and this would certainly result in better understanding of the operations of the government. A better transparency sets in. However, there are also other difficulties that could come about. The government might not be able to answer all the questions and the queries that come to it through this act. This could lead to a larger misunderstanding than what would have happened if the law and the query have not come about (Stiglitz 1999). The reasons why government might not be able to answer some of the questions could be: 1. The time and cost of answering the query might be too large to do so. 2. Poor records management 3. Lack of support from the senior management. 4. Cases of exemptions that could possibly be under national security or could cause other ramifications. 5. Serial requesters who could possibly be inclined to keep asking for some or the other requests that are not proper to answer. 6. Huge backlogs. All these could be happening and could result in the governments not responding to specific information related queries. This could cause distrust among the public on the government and could also lead to an understanding that the government is specifically suppressing information. More discussions and information sharing would happen mostly in those cases where information is not being given by the government. It is a common perception that the government has grown widely. There is a strong feeling among the public that the government is too bloated. They are out of touch with what is happening in the state and they are also not unaccountable to anything that might be going wrong in the state. There is also a consistent feeling that the state is too intrusive into the private lives of men and women. A report on the reform of British Civil Service, as late as in 1968, concluded that there is too much of secrecy surrounding British Civil Service and the wide range of issues that the government is handling and the wide spread impact that it is having on people, calls for a greater discussion on all issues before a decision is made. It also calls for a greater openness in whatever government is doing and deciding on (Fulton 1968). A similar reflection is done by the Federal Information Commissioner in Canada and he observes (Roberts 2005), 'Real secrets are rare. Sounding the alarm of competitive disadvantage has become as reflexive in some quarters as blinking. Concern for the public interest in the transparency of government's dealings with private businesses has been almost abandoned by government officials. New rules of the road are needed to govern the right to know more about government dealings with the private sector. First, the law should tell firms choosing to bid for government contracts that the bid details, and details of the final contract, are public for the asking.' It is therefore, important for the government to be transparent in all the spheres of their work not necessarily in their actions alone. They need to be transparent in their work and in their evaluation processes too. Implementation Issues The major issue faced by the government while implementing are the following: 1. Under many conditions, answers to the questions are unknown to the government itself. Some of the questions posed might not be answerable with the data that is available in the government and they might not be in a position to collect the information as well. Both the cost and the task might be prohibiting such an exercise. 2. The government may not be able to come back with an answer within a reasonable quantum of time. They might find themselves in a place which might be too time-consuming and the data might be just wide spread. There might also be an exercise involving multiple agencies in the government resulting in large scale time and manpower consumption to provide the answer. 3. Bureaucracy and the government officials might be against some of this information being gathered by private agencies for various reasons. Under this circumstances also there could be a larger time consumption resulting in abandoning of the work being done (Roberts 2006). 4. Some of the private companies might fight the government openness to uncomfortable for working with them. There are companies which do not bid in those states that let out the secrets of their bid to the competition in the name of transparency. Such things might also stop or impede implementation processes. Apart from this there are also issues and tasks which might be requested by a question, affecting a third party. These also stop the government from implementing the act in full. 5. When release of information which are classified and could cause prejudice to the national, international and commercial interests, then the implementation of ATI becomes all the more difficult. A case of particular interest is the one in the Ontario courts in Canada where the World Association of Nuclear Operators has filed a petition against Ontario Privacy Commissioner for releasing critical information from their inspection reports (Ontario 2006). Most of the acts that have been passed in the countries that have implemented FOI is in such a way that the disclosure should not cause financial and monetary loss to the people concerned by such a disclosure. 6. Balancing the interest of the public is a very critical in the entire implementation process (Campbell Institute 2003). There are also occasions when the information released could cause issues with the public. Such information has to be withheld for the sake of maintaining peace in the society (Uhl 2004). 7. Finally, it is also the cost of implementation of such a law. UK spends on an average PDS 35.5 million in 2005 to answer questions under the act (Frontier Economics 2006). The spending consistently is increasing with increased number of people resorting to the FOI act for understanding the government and its actions. All these activities impede the swift and efficient implementation of the act in the country. Conclusion Of course the act has implementation hassles and also has a number of other negative reasons why implementation itself could be difficult. But as it is seen earlier, there are number of positive aspects to the entire process. The government becomes more transparent. This transparency makes the government and the departments of the government to get a better rating among the people. The size of the government has been growing and there needs to be a clearer understanding by the public that there is no misunderstanding of the intentions. The act, irrespective of the implementation hassles, there are too many positive aspects which make the government more responsible and the state's ability to govern improves. The public will support the government in their endeavours if they could appreciate the reasons behind their moves. This is possible only if the Act is implemented. References 1. Birkinshaw, Patrick J. (2006) Freedom of Information and Openness: Fundamental Human Rights Administrative Law Review, 58 (1): 963-991 2. Campbell Public Affairs Institute (2003) National Security and Open Government ("Access to information and national security in Chile", Felipe Gonzalez). 3. Chapman, R.A. & Hunt, M., eds. (2006) Open Government in a Theoretical and Practical Context ("The potential benefits of Freedom of Information", Simon James) 4. Collin Bennett (Aug 2001) Globalization and Access to Information Regimes. Available at: http://www.atirtf-geai.gc.ca/paper-globalisation1-e.html 5. Frontier Economics (2006) Independent Review of the Impact of the Freedom of Information Act - A report prepared for the Department of Constitutional Affairs. 6. Fulton Commission (1968) The Civil Service. London, HMSO. 7. Heald, D. & Hood, C. (2006) Transparency: The Key to Better Governance ("FOI and the UK in Transparency and Openness", Andrew McDonald) 8. Jenkins, R. & Goetz, A (1999) Accounts and accountability: theoretical implications of the right-to-information movement in India, Third World Quarterly, 20(3):603-622 9. Leone, R.C. & Anrig, G., eds. (2003) The war on our freedoms ("Need to know: governing in secret," John Podesta) 10. Ontario Information Commissioner (2006) available at: http://www.ipc.on.ca/english/orders/orders-p/po-1805.htm 11. Roberts, A. (2006) Blacked out: government secrecy in the information age (chapter 5) 12. Roberts, A. (2005) Spin control and freedom of information: lessons for the United Kingdom from Canada, Public Administration, 83(1):1-23 13. Rosenbaum, Martin (2004) Open to question: journalism and freedom of information, Reuter's Foundation: Green College, University of Oxford 14. Stiglitz, J. E. (1999) On liberty, the right to know, and public discourse: the role of transparency in public life, Oxford Amnesty Lecture 15. Uhl, K.E. (2004) Comment: the Freedom of Information Act post-9/11: balancing the public's right to know, critical infrastructure protection, and homeland security, 53 American University Law Review Read More