20
4. To develop the efficiency and capacity of the Official
Information Commission
The Office of the Official Information Commission was
established to serve as the secretary and assistant to the Official
Information Commission. The office is small compared to the
scope of work in dealing with 8775 state agencies around the
country. To serve the commission and the state agencies, in
order to achieve the goal of promoting freedom of information,
the office should be developed to perform as a small but highly
efficient office. This year, the Official Information Commission
has set up the development strategy for the office to be organised
with potential to serve at its best capacity in evaluation and
monitoring. Concurrently, close coordination with state agencies
will be more emphasised in order to assist and facilitate proper
and efficient implementation of the Act.
Latest Cabinet resolution
The government of Thailand takes the issue of freedom of
information as a key policy, since it is considered the most
essential part of the political reform portfolio of the coun­
try. To promote people’s right to know is a crucial part of
being democratic, and adds more support to building up
civil society.
Such a recommendation was proposed by the O IC to
the government early this year and the Cabinet, on 1 Feb­
ruary 2000, approved the proposal and issued the follow­
ing confirmed guidelines:
(1) All State agencies have to speed up the strict enforcement
of the Official Information Act.
(2) Concerned agencies should support the budget, staff, staff
development, to the Official Information Commission, in order to
efficiently achieve the goal of the information law.
(3) The representative of ministries who acts as commissioner in
the Official Information Commission must work for the commission
at least 2 years in order to have the Official Information Commission
perform continuously.
(4) The Prime Minister’s Office together with all State agencies
should considerthe development of the information management
and documentary administration to be a systematic one with
nationwide network.
Freedom of Information Review
(5) The promotion of high ranking officials and the recruitment I
of new staff as legal officers should take the capacity and the i
performance in the management according to the Official I
Information Act as a standardized consideration.
C o n c lu d in g re m a rk s
The Official Information Act has been a crucial compo­
nent of democratic development as it encourages people
to enjoy more political participation by directly expressing |
their opinions and proposing their needs or suggestions
to the state. This should help make the government more
accountable and more transparent. In order to participate
well and efficiently, people should have full access to
state information and should know what is going on
through state policy. People should know all that the gov­
ernment does or will do. The Official Information Act
ascertains the government’s vision of ‘what the govern­
ment does or knows, people have the Right to Know’.
However, the Official Information Act is a new law, and !
the new concept of freedom of information is totally new
to both the Thai state officials and to the people. Thai
society thus needs some time to learn and practise more
about the Information Law. State officials have to under­
stand more clearly the procedures of law enforcement so
that they know how to provide information services and
disclose information to meet public requests. Meanwhile,
people should recognise their own right to know and I
know how to utilise the Information Act as a means of i
access to state information. Thai society should recog­
nise information law as an essential part of establishing |
accountable and transparent government and a crucial
part of eventually building up civil society.
N A K O R N SERIRAK!
Office of the Official Information Commission, Thailand. I
This paper was prepared for the Forum on Access to Information,
10 February 2000, Jakarta Indonesia.
BOOK REVIEW: Secrecy and Openness: The Federal Government
from Menzies to Whitlam and Beyond
b y G re g T e rrill; M e lb o u rn e U n iv e rs ity P res s, 2 0 0 0 ; R R P $ 2 9 .9 5 p a p e rb a c k ; 3 3 6 pp.
Secrecy and Openness: The Federal Government from
Menzies to Whitlam and Beyond provides an illumination
on the way in which information has been handled by the
Australian government and the varying emphases placed
on notions of secretive government. Throughout the book,
reference is made to actual documentary materials which
serve as useful illustrations of the way in which access to
government information can be withheld and the way in
which the process of gaining access can be problematic
at best.
The book opens with Terrill canvassing broad theories
about the role of open government in democracy and the
problems arising from citizens being denied access to
information. The book constitutes a timely historical
account of the use of secrecy and publicity within Austra­
lian government, an area which has been left relatively
unexplored except for ad hoc — but nevertheless impor­
tan t— attention given to it by journalists and academics.
Terrill traces the evolution of the notion of open gov­
ernment from the Menzies era — which was dominated
by the ethos of secrecy in government, — to the Whitlam
government — which adopted a more pro-active role in
facilitating greater citizen access to information — to the
Hawke era, during which the consolidation of the doctrine
of open government saw it emerge as an independent
legal doctrine.
Much of the material on which Secrecy and Openness
is based has not previously been publicly released, which
itself says something about the way in which access to
documents is structured in Australia. The book examines
the period of government for which access to official
archives is normally closed. Terrill notes that in research^
ing the period in question, his requests for documents
often took weeks to be answered, let alone to be cleared
for reading. The very process of obtaining information op
which to base analysis was fraught with difficulty,
although it was alleviated to a certain extent by current
and former government employees — or what Terrill
terms ‘covertly co-operative informants’ — assisting in
providing him with personal papers.
Perhaps ironically, Terrill admits in the introductory
section of the book that much of the material about
Freedom of Information Review
Freedom of Information Review
secrecy and openness in government can best be
obtained from the government itself. But whereas gov­
ernment studies have considered dimensions of ‘open
government’ and ‘cost effective government’, there is lit­
tle to evidence an appreciation of the interrelationship
between these concepts with notions of secrecy and pub­
licity, the public’s right to know and the need for account­
ability. The value of Terrill’s research lies in making this
interrelationship clear, particularly, as he notes, given
that no comparable history of secrecy and openness in
Britain and America has been compiled.
Terrill adopts the approach that it is best not to formu­
late precise definitions of concepts such as ‘information’,
icommunication’, ‘secrecy’ or ‘openness’. But there is
actical and analytical value in distinguishing between
iformation’ as being a static form and ‘communication’
> representing a process. Terrill elaborates on the
eaning of the term ‘information’ in arguing that it can be
inceived as an object in its own right (such as a docuent, speech or film) or may be conceived as a dimenon of government itself. Information in the latter sense
<ists almost inseparably from governmental action. This
the basis for the conceptual link between information
id communication — that is, government information
rieed not be confined to that which is written, but can
^xtend to action, inaction, silence and timing. In this way,
as Terrill notes, ‘information underpins almost all govern­
ment activity’. Concepts of secrecy and information are
then intertwined with the ‘politics of information’ and this
interaction is the focus of the book.
I
While the emphasis of Secrecy and Openness is on
ast events characterising government attitudes to openess, its findings are of continuing contemporary releance. The three dimensions of the book are particularly
nlightening, these being: first, an historical account of an
nder-explored side of government in Australia; second,
the clarification of the relationship between issues and
events otherwise rarely considered together; and third,
ajn examination of the way in which democracy has devel­
oped in the post-war period.
S
Part O ne of the book, titled ‘An Issue Emerges
1 9 6 0 -7 2 ’ — outlines the way in which secrecy has been
accorded political visibility in Australia and the way in
which greater openness began to be accepted. Part Two,
titled ‘Secrecy: Debating the R ules’, exam ines the
debates surrounding the treatment of information and the
means by which official information ought to be released.
This includes a discussion on issues surrounding public
comments made by public servants as well as debate
over access to archives and documents. It is in this con­
text that Terrill makes detailed comment on the use and
operation of Fol in Australia, including the way in which
access to information was cemented as a key and desir­
able feature of government in the 1970s.
Part Three draws together ideas pertaining to ‘publicity
a id propaganda’, with a focus on the role and develop­
nre d of government ‘information units’ and the brief opera:i on of the ‘Department of Media’ between 1972 and
19 75. Part Four raises some broader questions about the
nhplications for the relationship between government and
S'ociety arising from the interplay between secrecy and
P jblicity. The final chapters of the book examine the work
o'f the Royal Commission on the Administration of Australii n Government in the mid-1970s, before providing a
rr ore in depth look at propaganda and how ‘leaks’ of
Number 86, April 2000
21
information from government officials impact on secrecy
and perceptions of government.
Terrill draws a num ber of conclusions from his
research and first hand experiences in compiling Secrecy
and Openness. He argues that both secrecy and publicity
are subject to the larger rhythms of political change as
well as other influences such as individual preferences
expressed by political leaders, planning driven by crises
and long-term policies and technology. Moreover, the
development of secrecy paradigms in Australia has had
international dimensions in that reform here has often fol­
lowed that overseas. The introduction of concepts such
as ‘freedom of information’ and ‘whistleblowing,’ how­
ever, followed no clear cut path and it appears too sim­
plistic to say that reform was the result of government
conceding that it must give some privileges and become
more democratic. The reform agenda was set not only by
pressure groups but also by com petition between
departments.
What is particularly useful about the conclusions that
Terrill draws is the delineation of the concept of ‘open­
ness’ into legal, political and bureaucratic dimensions
(though he notes that these dimensions are neither mutu­
ally exclusive conceptually or practically). To oversim­
plify, the legal dimension relates to the protection of
individual rights through legislative means and associ­
ated case law. The political dimension is concerned with
the way in which information enhances power and
focuses on the struggles between various state organs
over the control and release of information. The bureau­
cratic dimension views openness with respect to the way
in which it can facilitate better policy and decision making.
Terrill sees this third dimension as important in promoting
greater openness, primarily because the legal dimension
cannot comprehend the whole of government communi­
cation and, even in combination with a political analysis,
could not adequately describe the relationship between
policy and communication in broader terms.
Finally, Terrill makes some concluding remarks on the
adequacy of the system of government, observing that
secrecy can be justified by strong policy arguments. He
notes that debates about secrecy have tailed off and that
calls for greater access have subsided, partly because
the situation has improved. The technical credentials of
the complex set of arrangements that exists to handle
government information are, according to Terrill, impres­
sive. However, Terrill’s final observations include the fact
that secrecy and publicity are as much about process as
they are about outcome and that the rules governing
secrecy are not applied consistently.
Secrecy and Openness fills an analytical gap in the
sense that there has, to date, been very little exploration
of access to government information regimes from a
n o n -leg al p ersp ec tive . T errill offers a refreshing
approach from an information management and histori­
cal perspective, which could be used as a platform for a
further series of explorations of open government. In this
sense it is a welcome contribution to debate about
secrecy in Australia.
R eview r: N icole T yson
Nicole Tyson is a student at the University of Tasmania.