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Freedom of Information and Parliamentary Departments
Author(s) -
Adams Carolyn
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
australian journal of public administration
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.524
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1467-8500
pISSN - 0313-6647
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8500.12052
Subject(s) - legislation , parliament , scrutiny , legislature , government (linguistics) , freedom of information , political science , public administration , law , law and economics , sociology , politics , philosophy , linguistics
This article examines whether freedom of information (FOI) legislation should apply to those agencies working to support parliaments. In the past, FOI legislation was characterized as a mechanism to allow greater scrutiny of the executive branch by parliament and the community. On this analysis, there was no reason to extend the legislation to the agencies of the legislative branch. But the role of FOI legislation has developed so that it now forms part of a wider integrity framework of government. The need to ensure integrity is a concern for all three branches of government and this article asks whether there are any convincing reasons in principle or practice to exclude the parliamentary departments from the FOI regime.