There are two main reasons why an access to information law is important:

A law will set out the principles of access to information in greater detail.

For example, one very important function of an access to information law is to set out what types of information will be exceptions to the general principle of maximum disclosure.

A law will provide the mechanisms and procedures for enforcing access to information. It will establish who is responsible for ensuring the public's right of access to information in practice.

International treaties and constitutions are important for laying down general principles, but they cannot offer a great deal of detail.

ARTICLE 19 has drawn up a set of principles on what should go into an access to information law, which are now widely recognised as being the standard for best practice on this issue. Here is the list of principles:

• Freedom of information legislation should by guided by the principle of maximum disclosure
• Public bodies should be under an obligation to publish key information
• Public bodies must actively promote open government
• Exceptions should be clearly and narrowly drawn
• Requests for information should be processed rapidly and fairly and an independent review of any refusals should be available
• Individuals should not be deterred from making requests for information by excessive costs
• Meetings of public bodies should be open to the public
• Laws that are inconsistent with the principle of maximum disclosure should be amended or repealed
• Individuals who release information on wrongdoing - whistleblowers - must be protected

Freedom of information legislation should by guided by the principle of maximum disclosure

The principle of maximum disclosure means there is a presumption that all information held by public bodies can be accessed by members of the public and that any restrictions should only apply in very limited circumstances.

More specifically this principle assumes that:

• public bodies have a duty to release information and, in turn those members of the public have the equivalent right to request that piece of information;
• the right of access to information is one that can be claimed by any resident in the country;
• the state should not expect any person requesting information to demonstrate any specific need or interest in the information;
• public bodies must release information if specifically requested to do so, but also publish and disseminate information of significant public interest.

In all cases the presumption is that information will be disclosed. In a few cases there may be a reason for withholding information. If there is, it is the responsibility of those who want to keep it secret to demonstrate this.

The reasoning behind the principle of maximum disclosure is equally simple.

The presumption that all information should be revealed is a consequence of who owns the information. All information held by government belongs to the people. Just as governments only hold office, temporarily, as the representatives of the people, so they only hold our information because we allow them to. Therefore, if we choose to take a look at it, they cannot stop us.

Of course, the practicalities are rather more complicated. However, it is important always to bear in mind the simplicity of this basic underlying principle: the information belongs to us.

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Public bodies should be under an obligation to publish key information

People often assume that the main part of an access to information law consists of providing a mechanism for members of the public to make requests for official information.

But that is not really so. The success of an access to information law is measured not by how many requests are submitted and answered, but by how much information reaches the public.

First, there is a clear benefit to the people in seeing what public bodies do. This is not related to requests for specific information, but is part of the general process of holding public institutions accountable.

In addition, very often the best way of making sure that the public have the information they want is to publish it before they ask for it. Once the system for processing requests is in place, this will be an easy thing to do. The department concerned can simply look at what requests it receives.

Publishing information in advance is also important in helping the public to make requests. If a public body or government department makes information available about what it is and what it does, this will help potential requesters to direct their inquiries to the right place. This will have an advantage for the officials themselves too, because they will not be constantly having to deal with requests addressed to the wrong departments.

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Public bodies must actively promote open government

There are two main concerns related to this principle:

• There is a culture of secrecy in some governments that makes officials reluctant to hand out information.
• The public don't know what their rights of access to information are, or where to go to find the information that they want.

The problem that any new access to information law will face is that generations of public officials have been trained in the idea that information has to be made available on a 'need-to-know' basis.

The assumption is always that information is secret, unless it can be proved otherwise.

The principle of maximum disclosure reverses this assumption.

But who is going to tell the public officials?

Civil society organisations can play a very important part in making an access to information law work properly, even to the extent of training public officials. However, the primary responsibility for reversing the culture of secrecy must rest with the government itself.

No matter what training public officials receive, they will always be wary of behaving in a way that might get them into trouble with their superiors. That is why their superiors must give them clear instructions that they are expected to be open and transparent in their dealings with the public.

It will also be important for the law to contain penalties that will punish officials who fail in their duty to make information available to the public. If it is only the departments that are fined, there is still little incentive for officials to comply with the law.

It will also be extremely important to make sure that the public understand that they now have a right to know exactly what officials are doing. The public too are used to the culture of secrecy, although they experience it from the other side. The law will have to devise ways of making sure that people know about the access to information law and what rights they now have.

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Exceptions should be clearly and narrowly drawn

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that freedom of information can be restricted if the information can damage national security, public order, or the rights and reputations of others. So, the law will exempt access to any information that relates to any of these topics.

However, what the UDHR (and other human rights standards) does not say is that all information relating to those interests are completely excluded from the scope of an access to information law.

The distinction is a very important one.

Information can only be kept secret if it can be shown that revealing it will actually cause damage to national security, privacy or one of the other interests protected in the access to information law.

Even when revealing information will cause damage to one of these interests, it should still be possible to publish it if it is in the public interest to do so.

So, the basis for refusing a request for information should only be one where there is a legitimate public interest in withholding the documents. If there is a refusal to disclose information, assuming it falls within the categories set out above, any such refusal should meet the following strict three-part test:

• the information must relate to a legitimate aim specified in the law;
• disclosure must threaten to cause substantial harm to that aim; and
• the harm to the aim must be greater than the public interest in having the information.

The law should apply to all branches of government (that is, the executive, legislative and judicial) as well as to all functions of government (including, for example, security and defence bodies). Non-disclosure of information must be justified on a case-by-case basis. Restrictions whose aim is to protect governments from embarrassment or the exposure of wrongdoing can never be justified.

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Requests for information should be processed rapidly and fairly and an independent review of any refusals should be available

One of the surest ways of making an access to information law ineffective is by making it impossible for ordinary members of the public to use.

This principle says:

• Information requests should be handled quickly
• Information requests should be handled fairly
• There should be a right of appeal to an independent body if a request for information is turned down:

Handling requests quickly:

There are many potential reasons why information might be needed quickly:

• Because it is information that is needed for some official purpose - such as information from an official registrar that is needed to complete a form
• Because it is information about something that may already be causing harm, such as toxic emissions or other sort of environmental damage
• Because the requester is a journalist working to a deadline and many other reasons.

And what harm would be caused by delay?

• The requester cannot complete their form in time. Perhaps they receive a fine or other penalty
• Toxic emissions continue, causing damage to the community's health
• The journalist cannot complete the story and the public are not informed about an issue of importance.

If records are kept properly there is no reason why information cannot be produced very quickly - sometimes instantly, as soon as it is requested.

If records are not kept properly - then they should be.

An access to information law should contain time limits for information requests to be met - but this must be understood as the maximum deadline, not the time that requests normally take to be processed. A normal time limit would be in the region of 20 days.

Handling requests fairly:

There are two important aspects of making sure that information requests are handled fairly:

• There should be no discrimination between different requesters. Everyone should be given access to the information to which they are entitled.
• The system for processing requests should be clear and understandable to everyone.

Official records are kept in written form. Many people who need that information are illiterate. How can an access to information law address this problem?

A good system that has been adopted in some countries is to appoint information officers in all bodies that are subject to the access to information law.

There are various aspects to their job. They help to overcome the culture of secrecy in the organisation and to make sure that records are kept in an organised manner so that information requests can be processed easily.

Information officers can also help requesters to formulate their requests, explaining the procedure to them and filling in the request form for them, for example, if they are illiterate or disabled.

Right of appeal:

Many laws have established an information commissioner, or some similar independent official whose role it is to receive appeals when requests are refused, as well as generally supervising the operation of the access to information law.

In other countries, to keep down costs countries have given these independent review powers to administrative tribunals or Ombudspersons with general powers to investigate complaints against public officials.

Ultimately, anyone whose request is turned down should also be able to appeal to a court of law, both on the facts of their request and on any legal issues.

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Individuals should not be deterred from making requests for information by excessive costs

Charging people a lot of money for the information is another way of making sure that access to information will not work.

One of the common objections to access to information is that it will be expensive. It might seem obvious, from the government perspective, to impose charges for requests for information that will allow the system to pay for itself.

However, access to information systems cost a lot less than is usually assumed. Government will actually gain many benefits from having such a system: it will improve efficiency, decision-making and the quality of record keeping.

It can also be argued that taxpayers already contribute towards record creation and management. Access to information is so integral to the proper functioning of government that it should not depend upon the user paying for it.

The argument for using charges to raise money to pay for the system is therefore less compelling than it might seem at first glance.

In practice, the fees charged will never cover operating costs, but these costs will be more than recovered by all the other savings resulting from a good access to information system.

Good access to information laws will impose no fee for making an application and set the fee for providing information at no more than the actual cost needed to produce the information - e.g., the cost of a sheet of photocopying, or whatever.

Some laws have a system of progressive charges. Corporate users are charged a higher fee for information requests, since they want the information for purposes of making money. This higher charge is used to subsidise costs for information requests by the public.

The law may also allow information to be released for free if the request is on a matter that is in the public interest.

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Meetings of public bodies should be open to the public

This is a provision that is not often included in access to information laws, but in principle there is no reason why it shouldn't be.

However, some countries have separate laws - so-called sunshine laws, because they bring government out in the open - that require institutions to hold their decision-making meetings in public.

Working from the principle of maximum disclosure, the reason for holding meetings publicly is the same as the argument in favour of access to documents.

Public bodies exist only to serve the public. The latter have a right to see what is being decided on their behalf.

It is a provision that would probably apply to decision-making meetings rather than to internal or advisory meetings. It is easy to think of many examples: meetings of health authorities, education authorities, planning boards, development agencies and so on.

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Laws that are inconsistent with the principle of maximum disclosure should be amended or repealed

Another way in which an access to information law can be made ineffective is by retaining existing laws that keep official information secret.

Most countries have a network of laws that preserve secrecy and make criminals out of people who disclose secrets. This existing network of secrets laws creates a problem for a new access to information law.

It is very likely that much official information - or all of it under some systems - will have been subject to classification. Classification means that all records are given a label - open, restricted, secret, top secret or whatever - which tells officials who is allowed to see the document, and who is not.

If this classification system is left in force after the access to information law is adopted, it will obviously play havoc with any free public access to information. Officials will simply refuse to hand out information to the public on the grounds that it is classified.

The only sensible and practical way to deal with this is to repeal or amend all existing laws about government secrecy. The new access to information law should then contain all the relevant provisions relating to when information can legitimately be kept secret.

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Individuals who release information on wrongdoing - whistleblowers - must be protected

No access to information system is perfect.

Open government will reduce the risk of corruption, human rights violations, maladministration, environmental pollution and many other dangers - but it will not eliminate it altogether. So what should a public official do if they come across evidence of one of these things? What if they find out that one of their superiors has been taking bribes? Or ordering the torture of prisoners? Or turning a blind eye to toxic emissions?

The first answer, of course, is that they should report it to someone more senior - an appropriate authority who can take action. Unfortunately things don't always work like that. It may be difficult, dangerous or just pointless to make a report.

So, what then?

This is where it is important that officials have legal protection if they go public with this information. Like a referee, they blow the whistle on unacceptable behaviour. So they are known as 'whistleblowers'.

One of the first famous whistleblowers worked for an international drugs company. In the early 1970s, Stanley Adams was a senior executive with the Swiss company Hoffman La Roche. He had documents that proved that the company he worked for had colluded with other drug producers to keep the price of vitamins high.

He passed the documents to the competition commission of the European Economic Community (EEC), since Switzerland had signed a free trade agreement with the commission.

He resigned from the company, but still asked the EEC to keep his name confidential.

The commission investigated - but blundered and sent copies of the documents Adams had given them to Hoffman La Roche. Adams was arrested and charged with industrial espionage and theft. He was held incommunicado for three months and told that he faced a 20-year jail term. His wife committed suicide.

In the event, Adams served six months in prison. Eventually he succeeded in extracting some financial compensation from the EEC for their mistake.

Whistleblower protection would override the legal obligations of confidentiality that any employee might have. And, very importantly, it should apply whenever an official or employee acts in good faith.

In other words, it should not be necessary to prove that there was corruption, a danger to the environment, or whatever - simply that the employee had a reasonable belief that there was and acted in good faith.

A more recent celebrated whistleblower was more fortunate than Stanley Adams, even though, as a security official, she was not protected by the whistle-blowing law.

Katherine Gun worked as an analyst for the General Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British government's electronic eavesdropping organisation.

In early 2003 she received a copy of an email from a US official detailing plans to eavesdrop on diplomats of member countries of the United Nations Security Council. Britain and the US were desperate to win a security resolution authorising their planned invasion of Iraq.

Gun was appalled by what she read and gave a copy of the email to a newspaper. The resulting story was a considerable embarrassment to both governments.

Gun admitted that she had leaked the email and was charged with espionage. In February 2004 charges against her were dropped. Speculation was that the British government might face more embarrassment if it was obliged to produce in court the confidential legal advice that it had used to support the Iraq invasion.

In any event, in a country where half the population opposed the Iraq war, it seemed unlikely that a jury would have found Gun guilty.

Nevertheless, Gun should never have been put on trial. She acted in good faith in her concerns that government officials were engaged in wrongdoing and should have been protected when she "blew the whistle" on what she believed to be a government action that was illegal and against the public interest.