Access to Information in the UK and India

Abstract

International Journal of Open Government http://ojs.imodev.org/index.php?journal=RIGO supplemented by a variety of online transparency experiments using Open Data (Worthy 2013a). Access to Information laws (also known as Freedom of Information or Right to Information laws) now exist in 92 countries (Access Info/CLD 2013). They have been pushed as a key driver for improving government transparency and accountability, promoting more open cultures within public bodies and, it is hoped, increasing public participation and trust (Worthy 2010). In the developing world they are seen as a powerful anticorruption weapon and a means of securing wider social and political rights (Darch and Underwood 2010). While the idea of transparency appears simple, it conceals nuances and complex interpretations. According to Meijer "the specific form that government transparency takes-or does not-varies enormously. There is no uniform, standardized approach to transparency but an immense variety of sorts and types of government transparency" laws (2013, 2). The impact of FOI is "highly idiographic" and the "social and political contexts and specific histories of different countries" need to be taken into account (Darch and Underwood 2010, 7). Recent work has examined how transparency can move in different directions with different intentions, ranging from, for example, "mapping at high levels of aggregation" to localised, if not street level, "micro-level" openness (Heald 2012, 41). The dynamics are "complex because they entail interactions between a variety of actors, uncertain values and rapidly changing technology" and take place within "a variety of legal frameworks, in different cultural settings, and within complex national…policy contexts" (Meijer 2013, 1). These variations can lead to strategic uncertainty regarding aims, cognitive uncertainty as to policy options, and institutional uncertainty as transparency shifts rules and procedures (Meijer 2013, 3-4). Recent experimental research found that transparency in different policy areas can have very different effects on both institutions and public perceptions (De Fine Licht 2013: Grimmelikhaujsen 2012).