Overview of Part I

The first part of this report analyses the right to access information in OECD member countries based on examples, but without making any claim of exhaustiveness. Chapter 1 examines the creation of IGAIs and their area of jurisdiction, and it examines national and international laws that led to their creation. It distinguishes between national, local, and federated IGAIs, and it presents, whenever they exist, their networks of public officials in the entities required to communicate information. Chapter 2 examines the legal nature and composition of the IGAIs. It first analyses them in terms of either their insertion within other institutions or administrations, or, to the contrary, their autonomy, whether they are single-person or collegial entities. Secondly, it looks at the terms and conditions for the appointment and composition of the various IGAIs and the duties, rights, and qualifications of the persons who form part of this body. Chapter 3 examines the IGAIs’ missions, focusing initially on the general missions, such as the promotion and coordination of the government’s actions to encourage access to information, the general monitoring of the law’s enforcement, competencies in terms of opinions and recommendations, the duty to inform the public, and issues related to referrals to IGAIs and self-referrals by these same IGAIs. It then goes on to analyse the system for individual access to information requests by presenting the IGAIs’ actual jurisdiction, limits on the right to access information, and proceedings before IGAIs. Chapter 4 focuses on the highly structured nature of the workings and organisation of the IGAIs, as well as their financial, human, and material resources, and the risks of an excessive number of requests that are likely to affect an IGAI. Chapter 5 concerns the various kinds of oversight of the IGAI’s work, be it administrative, political, parliamentary, judicial, or by citizens and civil society.

The right to access information is of fundamental importance to OECD countries. This right has long been recognised in some member countries, for example in Northern Europe, and it developed swiftly in all OECD countries after WWII. By now, all these countries have highly developed laws on this matter. Among the fundamental mechanisms for rendering the right to information fully effective, the establishment of an institution guaranteeing access to information (IGAI) is of primary importance. IGAIs fulfil various missions in addition to ensuring the right to access information. They also review refusals of access to information, and are more readily accessible and less onerous for users than courts, whose burden they seek to lighten.

OECD member countries have four kinds of bodies that act as an IGAI:

• A Commission or Institution (for example, in Hungary, France, Italy, Portugal, Mexico, and Chile);

• An Information Commissioner (in the United Kingdom, Slovenia, Scotland, and Germany, for example);

• The Ombudsman or Mediator (for example, in Sweden, Norway, and New Zealand);

• And, finally, an ombudsman associated with a body responsible for monitoring this right, such as the Right to Information Assessment (Review) Council in Turkey, or BEDK.1

These different types of IGAIs highlight the great diversity within OECD member countries, especially in terms of: the conditions for the creation of IGAIs and their area of jurisdiction (Chapter 1); the IGAIs’ legal status and composition (Chapter 2); the IGAIs’ missions (Chapter 3); the means of the IGAIs’ operation (Chapter 4); and the various forms of oversight to which IGAIs are subject (Chapter 5).

Note

← 1. Republic of Turkey, Prime Minister, “Legislation on the right to information”, www.bedk.gov.tr/Yayinlar/LEGISLATION_ON_THE_RIGHT_TO_INFORMATION/LEGISLATION_ON_THE_RIGHT_TO_INFORMATION.pdf.

Overview of Part I