PARLIAMENT AND DEMOCRACY - Inter-Parliamentary Union

A parliament that is open and transparent I 47
In an effort to comply with citizens’ constitutional right to information,
Senate regulations include rather detailed provisions covering, for
example, the need to inform the public of forthcoming Senate sittings,
public right to attend Senate and Senate committee sittings, public
access to Senate papers, minutes and stenographic reports from Senate
and Senate committee sittings, as well as to other documents and information
associated with the work of Senate and its bodies …… There is
no doubt that access to information issues legislated in so much detail
has a great deal of impact on the transparency of work performed by
the Senate and its bodies, contributing on one hand to the democratisation
of life and, on the other, to activating citizens who can, if they so
wish, become familiar with Senate work via the access to information
from of their choice. This is extremely important for a democratic
societal control of people’s representatives, whose performance voters
can scrutinise using numerous possibilities of accessing information
while at the same time learning democratic parliamentary procedures.
Romania’s parliament is covered by a general law on the free access to
information of public interest. ‘In application of this law, the Senate and
Chamber of Deputies provide access to information of public interest, both
ex officio and on request, through their respective specialised services.’
Slovenia’s parliament is also covered by a general act on Access to
Information of a Public Character, applying to all public bodies. Ecuador has
its own access to information statute, ‘guaranteeing the transparency of all
public activity including that of parliament’. Typical of all such legislation is
the existence of independent bodies which are authorised to hear complaints
against decisions to deny access to information, including those made by
parliament itself. Here, to take another example, is how the Parliament of
Jamaica describes the purpose of its FOI Act:
The objects of this Act are to reinforce and give further effect to certain
fundamental principles underlying the system of constitutional democracy,
namely – a) governmental accountability; b) transparency; and
c) public participation in national decision-making, by granting the
public a general right of access to official documents held by public
authorities.
Many international organisations have published model FOI laws, which
are very similar in the issues covered. Here, for example, are some of the key
principles for FOI outlined in a publication by the global campaign for free
expression, Article 19: