We include here a non-exhaustive list of arguments for having access to information:

• Making government accountable
• Increasing public participation
• Promoting women's involvement
• Making private companies accountable
• Tackling corruption
• Making better decisions
• Protecting privacy
• Protecting human rights
• Promoting workers' rights
• Promoting health
• Strengthening the economy
• Protecting the environment
• Making the country secure

Making government accountable

Elected governments are likely to be more responsive to the electorate - and more likely to deliver on their promises - if their actions can be scrutinised through an access to information mechanism.

By government we mean not just the government of the day but the whole unelected apparatus of state as well. Sometimes even elected governments have difficulty controlling the bureaucracy.

The problems may range from outright mismanagement to simple inefficiency, delay and insensitivity to the needs of ordinary people.

Public access to information is a way of keeping the apparatus on its toes, of making it more responsive to people's needs and demands and can also be a way of making government more efficient.

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Increasing public participation

Most people's experience of democracy is of casting a vote and then spending the next four or five years wondering what effect it has had.

The weakness of representative democracy - periodically electing members of parliament who make decisions on your behalf - is that they have a long, long time when they can do anything they choose (or nothing at all) before the electors can call them to account.

And when the opportunity comes to re-elect your representatives, the voters usually have little idea what the government has really been up to while it was in power.

Of course this is closely related to the previous argument about keeping government accountable.

When we talk about increasing political participation, part of what we mean is that voters are better informed when they choose their government. But it is only part.

Just as important is the idea that political participation means that citizens are informed and active.

Citizens concerned about particular issues affecting their community may use the law to get hold of information. Or they may turn up at meetings of decision-making bodies - another important part of an access to information law - and get closer to the policy process in that way.

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Promoting women's involvement

The reasons why access to information can improve general political knowledge and participation also apply particularly to women.

There are many ways in which women are discriminated against and disadvantaged politically. Discrimination in access to information is one way.

It is often said that we live in an 'information society'. From this has come the idea - and indeed the reality - of the 'information rich' and the 'information poor'. Of course, to a very large degree these are just the rich and the poor by a slightly fancier name.

There is no doubt that traditionally disadvantaged groups - of whom women are the largest - are almost always to be found among the information poor.

For women, information may just be important in itself.

For example, information about reproductive health is something that affects every woman for a large part of her life.

But information may also be a way of unlocking the restrictions on women's power and role in society. Indeed, the example of reproductive health is just such a case in point. Women's lack of control over reproductive health is one of the major reasons why they are not able to play a fuller role in society, including participating politically.

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Making private companies accountable

If governments often seem unaccountable, the activities of private companies appear much more so.

Ordinary people, who may be vastly affected by the activities of private companies in their everyday life, have no way of calling them to account (unless they have the good fortune to own large parts of them).

Indeed, it is not only ordinary people who lack the means to call companies to account. The major trans-national corporations have turnovers larger than the economies of many countries. They are more powerful than governments.

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Tackling corruption

Corruption is a major blight on democratic government and respect for human rights.

People's socio-economic rights are trampled on because public funds are wasted and decisions are made in the interests of corrupt individuals, not the public good. Their civil and political rights are violated because they are unable to control what governments do, despite casting their votes.

The international organisation Transparency International (www.transparency.org) fights corruption. The name is revealing: they regard openness as the enemy of corruption. Here's what they say:

"... the legal and administrative environment should provide an enabling environment for a free press. The freedom of the press will be aided by several measures, such as passing Freedom of Information laws giving private citizens, including journalists, access to government information; repealing or revising anti-defamation laws and 'insult' laws to ensure that these cannot be used to threaten and fetter the press; ending press and media censorship; raising the professional standards of journalists; ending government discrimination such as controlled access to newsprint, advertising of certain media; and, ensuring that state-owned media employees can maintain professional standards of independence and responsibility." (Transparency International, 2000)

Nobody imagines that corruption is going to be eradicated by filing a few information requests under an access to information law. The importance of access to information in fighting corruption is the more general aim of making government more open, as well as making it more difficult for government to hide corruption.

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Making better decisions

This general move towards open government also contributes towards greater efficiency. Not only will the apparatus of government work more smoothly, but an open government will be more likely to make better decisions.

There are two main reasons for this:

• The first is that when governments are required to make their records accessible to the public, they will rapidly have to start keeping their records in better order. This will mean that they work more efficiently, but also that they know more about what they are actually doing. This helps them to make more informed, rational and sensible decisions.
• The second reason why access to information promotes better decision making is that a more open style of government is more inclusive. It encourages the public to contribute to discussions. Because more opinions are included, this means that decisions are likely to be better informed.

Let's consider a simple example of how this might work:

You work for a civil society organisation that does health education for women in the rural areas. A parliamentary committee is reviewing the budget vote for the ministry of health.

Using the access to information law, you get information about the ministry's work in the area of women's health education. You discover, as you suspected, that it is minimal.

You also find out that the ministry is ignoring crucial issues at a local level. Using the ministry's own facts and figures you are able to make a submission to the parliamentary committee and the vote is amended.

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Protecting privacy

This is another argument that would be near the top of most people's list.

Governments and other large organisations hold data about us. There is nothing sinister about this in itself. They need some information in order to provide the services that we require and expect.

But things can go dangerously wrong in a number of respects:

• Personal data can be inaccurate
• Personal data can be used wrongly
• Personal data can be passed to the wrong people

Some countries have data protection laws that deal with this issue separately from an access to information system.

But whichever law it is in, it is vital that you have the right:

• To see, check and correct personal data about yourself
• To be protected against the data being passed to those who are not entitled to see it.

Whether this issue is dealt with by a data protection law or an access to information law, it should include a procedure that gives everyone a right to look at personal information held about them. It should also create penalties for releasing or passing on personal information without consent.

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Protecting human rights

It is clear that access to information is a human right in itself. But one of the reasons that it is especially important is that it is a key to protecting and guaranteeing many other human rights, e.g. political participation, women's rights, privacy, workers' rights, health rights and environmental rights.

In general, the reason why access to information and open government protect human rights is the same as the reason why they help to tackle corruption. It is much easier to deal with malpractice of whatever sort when it is out in the open.

The same applies whether we are talking about serious violations of civil and political rights - say, torture or detention without trial - or economic, social and cultural rights.

Information gathered under an access to information law can be extremely effective in the struggle for socio-economic rights:

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Promoting workers' rights

One very important set of socio-economic rights that can be greatly helped by access to information is rights in the workplace.

It is not difficult to think of examples of how access to information might benefit workers. In particular it will give them information about health and safety issues and other aspects of working conditions: e.g., they will be able to find out about new processes being used and whether these have harmful side effects.

For workers in government employment - or for any other employer covered by the law, public or private - an access to information law will allow them to get financial information about the state of the enterprise in public bodies, or private companies fulfilling public functions. This may be extremely important in wage negotiations.

There is a common assumption that it is quite normal and reasonable for employers and employees to sit at the negotiating table on completely unequal terms. One side knows everything that it needs to know, while the other side knows nothing that it has not learned from its own experience.

This may indeed be normal, but it is far from reasonable.

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Promoting health

At an individual level it is clear why information is important to health: knowing what are healthy practices and what are risky ones; knowing what symptoms indicate potentially dangerous illnesses; and knowing how to treat simple problems - all help to promote good individual health.

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Strengthening the economy

This might seem a surprising inclusion on this list, but to a large extent it is simply the sum of many of the things that we have already talked about.

A country with open government will have less corruption, better public decision making and a healthier population with fewer going hungry. Of course the economy will benefit from this.

Add to these reasons the fact that businesses too can use the access to information law to gather information. This allows them an insight into government policy and as a better understanding of their market as well as better decision making

Governments hold a lot of information that is useful for businesses, but usually no mechanism exists to make that information available when it is needed. An access to information law provides that mechanism.

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Protecting the environment

This is one of the most important reasons for seeking access to information and more open government.

Information can have an immediate impact on decisions affecting the future of the environment, as well as their short-term human effects.

This is partly because an access to information law allows the public to monitor bad decisions, e.g. granting permission to build a factory where industrial waste will leak into a town's water supply (see the case study of access to information on privatisation of water in Cochabamba, Bolivia)

But by imposing openness on companies it is also possible to make them behave better.

Click here to read an example from the United States that proves this point.

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Making the country secure

You may be surprised to see 'national security' on the list of arguments in favour of access to information. Usually, this is top of the list of arguments against.

However, there are two important reasons for including it on our list of arguments in favour:

The first reason is that in many countries the various agencies responsible for 'national security' in reality spend a lot of their time undertaking surveillance, harassment and repression of political opponents of the government.

For the same reason that freedom of information is a way of promoting human rights, it will also help to keep national security agencies focused on the proper business in hand.

Corruption in the defence forces is also widespread. Defence procurement - arranging contracts to supply goods and equipment to the military - is one of the most lucrative businesses. Inflation of contracts and awarding them to General So-and-so's brother directly undermines national security.

For the same reason that freedom of information is a way of promoting human rights, it will also help to keep national security agencies focused on the proper business in hand.

The second reason for putting national security on the list is that it is important that we think hard about what we mean by security.

Governments, when they refer to national security, normally mean the security of their own grip on power. They might warn of plots and conspiracies organised by enemies, or even threats of invasion. But often what they are most scared of is popular opposition.

Most ordinary people have a completely different view of security. If you ask, e.g., people in developing countries what makes them feel insecure, most are likely to give one of two answers: poverty and crime.

An access to information law may also help to tackle the causes of conflict. Some groups may feel that they are being unfairly treated by the government or that another social group is being treated better.

An access to information law can help reduce tensions by allowing people to scrutinise decisions personally. Also, greater participation in government processes will contribute to decreasing people's feelings of alienation or exclusion from power.

There is another more down-to-earth argument in favour of access to information: it can make everyday life much simpler and more straightforward.

The culture of government secrecy does not just mean that 'sensitive' information is withheld. It means that all sorts of useful information is difficult to get hold of.

In countries that have freedom of information laws, often the most popular aspects will be drop-in centres where people can get simple but very important information, e.g. on welfare benefits, local tax rates, building plans and so on.

Now we have a fairly formidable array of arguments in favour of access to information. We hope that you will find these useful in your campaigning and that you will be able to develop them to suit your own particular situation.

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