International Conference on The Power of Information 2012: "Government Information: A Right to Access, Transparency and Equality" (original) (raw)

As information is being defined the “an assemblage of data in comprehensible form capable of communication and use”. Even the structure of knowledge pyramid denotes the importance that is being assigned to information, as it forms the basis to pass to knowledge (organised information) and wisdom (applied knowledge) levels. The hackneyed phrase “information is power” may sound “old-fashioned”, but it is an undeniable fact. Politically speaking governments early detected the importance of collecting information either for the purposes of administration and governance or for military and espionage purposes. For instance, the creation of the national states in Europe at the 15th century and the great exploratory travels resulted in the collection of tax, demographic and commercial data on behalf of public administration. Further, the Ottoman Empire is known to have one of the most effective and detailed land registries in order to collect the attributable taxes, whereas in Greece is still used in cases of dispute as evidence of ownership. On the other hand, during the Cold War era both sides had developed a sophisticated network of espionage and information retrieval methods. The aforementioned paradigms are indicative of the significance that the collection of information bares for both public administration and governments worldwide. Government information refers to information generated, collected, maintained, managed and held by public agencies during the performance their operational tasks. Therefore, the amount of information held by public administration is immense and most times inaccessible, as unfortunately, it is not uncommon that citizens cannot have access to information gathered by government agencies whether it concerns them or the workings of the government itself. This predicament is attributed either to the inherent tendency of public administration towards secrecy or any other number of restrictions such as copyright or patent techniques, monopolistic control, charging of access and the timely and equal availability of such information. It is not enough to be able access government information in general; the fundamental concern is to access the piece of information needed in timely and unrestricted manner. Government information has been characterized as the “unexploited treasure” of public administration, which can result into enormous benefits for all parties involved, and mainly for public administration itself. The power of government information lies chiefly in its inherent economic value, which if exploited can boost economy and innovation, especially within this economic environment of recession. Public sector thrives of information that is not being further processed after its initial collection, which it can be proven to be valuable firstly to public administration itself when re-using it, and secondly to the private sector as an easier and more timely access can provide a comparative advantage to all stakeholders. Especially, the re-use of government information is a pillar for e-government in terms of procedures' simplification and redtape cutting. Further, it offers authentic and reliable documentation of the administrative activities of any public agency. Especially in times of vivid social networking the exploitation of ICTs and telecommunications networks for publicizing and communicating government information is easier than ever before via one-stop governmental portals. This communication has a practical effect on all interested parties as it promotes the communication between the government and its citizenry, it facilitates the provision of services and minimizes the effort of access, especially in cases of real-time data transmission. For instance, the collaboration of the British company ITO World with Google to bring real-time update for any disruptions on the London Underground has been proven extremely useful to millions of passengers when scheduling their daily trips. Moreover, government information bares a historical value because it serves as the “written” memory of public administration by depicting the history and the general context that public administration has been evolved throughout the years, and enables researchers to impartially review and evaluate the decisions of a government based on objective and reliable resources. For that reason, all developed countries have established special agencies –in most cases the national archives or any corresponding body-- authorized to undertake the task of preservation and access. Open government is a further development that comes to amplify the concept of openness and transparency by the use of open data as a new condition for the communication and transaction with government agencies. Open government data are based on the availability of government information on a free and unrestricted manner always with respect to intellectual or industrial property issues as well as personal data protection and privacy ones. Access to and openness of government information is an established constitutional right based both on the reasoning that it is being produced by taxpayers’ money and on the notion that“...is an inherent right or part of the social contract between the government and the governed to hold government accountable to its citizenry” as it records the workings of the administration, the public officials and the elected officials, and also it informs citizens on their rights and obligations. Consequently, access to government information enhances and furthers the equality among the citizenry as it offers the opportunity to the public to be informed on government and policy issues that have immediate affect on everyday life, and therefore promoting social inclusion and effacing disparities, especially for the most unfortunate ones. A better informed citizen is a more participatory one that exercise better control to its government, and, thus, democracy is being enhanced. For example, Greek State institutionalized the free access to all issues of its Official Gazette via the website of National Printing Office with the Law 3861/2010, an act which has already be proven very beneficial as the access to all legislation from the foundation of the Greek State in 1833 is just a click away! Further, access to government information enables the public to reach a pool of “raw” informative material, which can be linked and interconnected in unlimited ways depending on everyone's background and cognitive level, which when combined with the enclosed economic value of this type of information could provide a comparative advantage in business terms. Finally, access to government information enhances and furthers the government's transparency as the workings and the decision process is out at the open with the citizenry to be able to control the decisions and their grounds, and participate actively to the decision-making process by stating openly its opinions and points of view. That way the levels of accountability of government is being increased as well, because both public officials and elected ones have in mind that are being scrutinized and they must be able to prove the legitimacy of their actions in any given occasion. Transparency, accountability and participation enhance democracy especially in times of social, political and ethical crisis worldwide, and is one of the desired outcomes of the new governance era. Or as Thomas Jefferson stated “...information is the currency of democracy”. Clearly, there are instances that government information should not be provided openly and without restrictions to the public as in case of homeland security, national defense and personal data protection. However, on the other hand, governments should not use these instances as a pretense for prohibiting access to government information. The purpose of this paper is to examine the power of government information along with evidencing the underlining significance of it in this ever changing political, social, economic and technological context. Further, we seek to verify that the access to government information is, above all, an undeniable right of every citizen, which at the same time promotes equality and social inclusion as well as transparency and accountability by shaping better informed and a more actively involved citizens, which trust their government more and, thus, the government increases the legitimacy of its workings. Finally, we intend to present that the ever-changing technological environment is not a thread for providing and accessing government information, but instead can be a considerable ally on this front if the appropriate policy solutions are adopted beforehand.