Next generation FoI between information management and web 2.0

ABSTRACT

In Western democracies citizens' access to public information is considered a basic civil right and has been regulated in Freedom of Information (FoI) legislation. Some countries, e.g. the US, have revised or amended their legislation with regard to new electronic means of ICT in order to improve accessibility and effectiveness. While e-government research does not yet pay sufficient attention to particular FoI-requirements when dealing with information systems, there is a great potential for improvement by applying professional concepts and tools of information management. This paper does not present specific research results. It rather contains some observations and considerations from which future research questions can be derived. The basic argument is that FoI could gain much if systems developed for internal purposes with some adaptation would be partially opened to the public. This will be illustrated by practical examples, in particular how to improve accessibility of documents by professional document or records management systems and how to increase the timeliness of responding to requests by ticketing systems as they are used in IT-support. But so far despite obvious advantages except for a small town in Sweden most agencies in North America and Europe seem to be reluctant to open their internal systems. This might change in the future as in some countries Non Government Organizations (NGOs), following the web 2.0 approach of user generated content, are offering new facilities for access to government information and for monitoring FoI requests. Thus a crucial question is whether these third party offerings initiate a productive competition and create the necessary pressure to make public FoI websites more citizens centered and user friendly.

REFERENCES

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INDEX TERMS

General Terms:
Legal Aspects

Keywords:
access to information, document management systems, freedom of information, information retrieval, non governmental organizations, tracking and tracing, transparency, user-centered design, web 2.0