Open Government Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

The term open government indicates a governmental activity based on transparency and freedom of information. Although for centuries the principle of secrecy has constituted a pillar of public administration, more recently an innovative paradigm seems to be emerging. Starting in the late 1960s, and especially spreading in the Anglo-Saxon countries, a reform movement has struggled against government secrecy, considered as “a deliberate act on the part of those who govern to preserve or to add to the value of information that they possess by keeping the governed or parts thereof from knowing it at a given point in time” (Galnoor, 299).

Campaigns to reduce official secrecy have broad and ill-defined objectives, but share four basic values: to promote more ethical conduct, to enhance executive and legislative accountability, to advance more informed policy making, and to help individual citizens and groups advance particular rights and interests. Such campaigns have also led to the adoption of legal acts—such as the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) of 1966—that provide legal rights for public access to government information.

In recent years, new instruments have been introduced to involve citizens in the deliberation process on which public policy is based. For instance, a wide range of open-space meetings and town hall meetings let citizens meet to exchange information and opinions on a theme of public interest. Such initiatives have often been based on intensive use of new information and communication technologies, which create additional spaces for public scrutiny and debate.

Bibliography:

Galnoor, Itzhak. Government Secrecy in Democracies. New York: New York University Press, 1977.

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