Principles Guiding Public Right-To-Know
From: OMB Watch's A Citizen’s Platform For Our Environmental Right-to-Know, March, 2001.
(See http://www.ombwatch.org/rtk/platform/.)

 

We affirm that, in order to fulfill government’s democratic obligation to honor the public’s right to know, Congress, the federal Executive Branch, the Courts, the States and Tribes, and local governments must be guided in their actions and decisions by core principles.  These core principles derive from at least four fundamental assumptions about a democratic government’s responsibility to the public:

 

·         An informed public citizenry is critical to the effective functioning of a democracy;

 

·         The public’s ability to participate in an informed democracy, as well as the Constitutional freedoms of speech, assembly, and petition, and the functioning of a free press, all depend upon broad access to all relevant information;

 

·         The free flow of information is the lifeblood of our democracy and is a public resource, not a commodity to be taxed or sold; and

 

·         Information is an essential public policy tool, supplementing but not supplanting government’s regulatory authority in carrying out its responsibilities to the citizens.

 

Given these elements fundamental assumptions, the health of our American democracy demands government and society conduct the affairs of governance consistent with several key principles:

 

§         In our democracy, all members of the public have an enforceable right to anonymous, timely, and unfiltered access to government information at low or no cost. 

Democracy means that citizens and communities can freely access information – especially including information held by government – to make decisions affecting our lives, families, communities, and nation.

§         Government has a duty to identify and collect data and information to protect and benefit the public, spur efficiency, ensure accountability, and strengthen democratic processes. 

 

Like fire protection, collecting and providing environmental information is a core function of government.  Government, industry, and the general public must all have adequate information to inform decision-making, ensure accountability, and document results of environmental decisions.  The public must be able to hold governments and private entities accountable for the decisions they make.

 

§         Government has an affirmative responsibility to make information broadly available to the public in an equal and equitable manner and in formats that are timely, easily located, understandable, and useful.

Strategies for information access must ensure equity among groups with differing levels of capability to acquire and process the information. Moreover, government must provide a means for locating and directly accessing information and protecting the personal privacy of individuals about whom the government holds information.

 

§         Those who seek to withhold information carry the burden of proof to justify their position. 

Only the narrowest of exceptions should be allowed to the general principle of broad public access to government information, such as for the protection of national security, public safety, or personal privacy.  Those asserting trade secret or confidential business information claims carry the burden of substantiating those claims.

§         Government should strive to ensure that the information it releases is complete and accurate; however, questions about completeness or accuracy should not be permitted to restrict the free flow of information.

The best solution to inaccurate or incomplete information is to release all information in hand for robust debate and public airing of the issues, rather than keeping it secret.  Government then has an obligation promptly to correct inaccurate information in an open process.

§         Citizens have a right to participate in government decision making about public information access policies and strategies.

This principle should not be construed as limiting the free flow of individual information products from government to the public.

§         Citizens have a right to hold the government accountable for enforcing policies requiring public dissemination of information.

Government employees who disclose violations of those policies are entitled to the same “whistleblower” protections as those who disclose government waste, fraud and abuse.

§         Government should embrace electronic media without disadvantaging those without access.

Government should embrace and facilitate the use of electronic media to accept, organize, and disseminate information in a manner that does not disadvantage those without access to electronic communication tools.

§         Government efforts to provide equal and equitable access to government information are not competitive with the private sector.

Government should employ open source systems to fulfill the public’s right to know.  To access information in the public domain the public should not have to purchase proprietary software, hardware or other products and services.  Such activities cited as “competitive” but which we deem essential government services include government web sites that provide free public tools for accessing and analyzing information. 

§         Government has a responsibility to manage, over its entire life-cycle, the information it creates or collects, including documents, records, electronic files, and databases.

 A clear memory of our history informs who we are, our problems and our strengths, enabling us to make better decisions and avoid past mistakes.  This responsibility extends to the electronic world and, left untended, will extend the twenty-year gap historians cite as resulting from government’s failure to archive properly the electronic information it collects. This responsibility also extends beyond maintaining an archive of information to ensuring we have permanent public access to the documents, records, electronic files and databases that shape our collective history. Government’s responsibility extents to those entities who collect, manage or disseminate information on the government’s behalf. 

§         Government has an obligation to ensure the public can determine national trends and indicators to benefit the public interest.

To ensure that information collected can be compared, integrated and synthesized, government has an obligation to ensure common standards across governments (local, state, and federal) and compatible collection mechanisms.

Send comments on this paper to Gary Bass