Transparency and Accountability

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Abstract

Democracy is maintained through accountability and transparency of the government to the public. Therefore, every government has the responsibility to ensure that it is transparent and accountable to its citizens. Even though the government’s federal agencies are distinct in functions and nature, they all have the mandate to ensure that information is contained in records that are accessible to the public and that the information contained is relevant and transparent. Therefore, to ensure that the people have this democratic aspect, the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Acts work hand in hand. The two provisions are similar in functionality and ensure that there is the right to access the information or the records of the agencies that may contain relevant information to the public and provide the means for doing so. However, each provision has exemptions to this democratic aspect. For instance, information regarding the supervision of financial institutions is exempted from disclosure. This research paper embarks into an intensive exploration of both Acts through reviews of literature and documentary evidence to understand how the two promote the accountability and transparency of a democratic government.

Introduction

A democratic government refers to a government that is a type of government in which the discretion and civic responsibilities are vested in the people. The authority is exercised by all citizens who have attained the age of maturity in the subject country, and they do so either directly or indirectly through the publicly and democratically elected representatives. In the government type, the foundational principle is that the majority have their say, and therefore, it is they who rule against the minority. As such, the central goal of democratic societies and government is the common good of all the people. Similarly, all the federal agencies in a nation are mandated with the regulatory obligations intended to provide and defend the common good of all the people, even though these regulatory responsibilities vary in the manner that they function and their degree of jurisdiction.

For every democratic society, transparency and accountability are very critical aspects. The people’s participation requires a conducive environment in which there is both the transparency of the government to the people and accessibility. People should therefore be able to access information. The media has the right to gather and disseminate relevant and appropriate information to the citizens. Similarly, the public has the right to access any relevant information or affects their democratic rights, such as participation in decision making.

Similarly, the right to privacy is a very important aspect of democracy. It is a fundamental entitlement that is inherent and undeniable to every citizen, and the government is obligated to defend and protect this right. Infringement of the right to privacy has a negative consequence as it alienates the foundational principles of democracy.

As seen, a democratic government must ensure there are transparency and accountability to the citizens. The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and the Privacy Act are critical instruments in meeting this goal and objective to the public. The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is a legal provision that “permits the people to access to existing, indentifiable and unpublished executive branch agency records without explanation or justification”(Kwoka, 2015). As such, the provision enables the public to access any records of the governmental agencies. Therefore, the only restriction to the right is when those records are within any of the categories that exempt the public from accessing such information. Those categories include classified information like in the military or defense intelligence, information that has been restricted from being disclosed by any other federal policies and laws, and any information that has a sole relation to an agency’s operations or related to the rules of internal personnel. Other exemptions include commercial and trade secrets or any other financial information that can be termed as being privileged or confidential information. The privileged communications between and within agencies are also exempted, and this extends to cover even the scope of attorney-client privilege and the privilege of the deliberative process.

FOIA protects the disclosure of any information that would result in the invading of another person’s privacy and that which has been complied with for law enforcement. The FOIA Act also prohibits information relating to the geological wells or financial institutions’ supervision.

The Act requires all the federal agencies to process its records and requires that no initial fees be charged for the public to submit requests. However, FOIA may provide a fee in some special circumstances, which the public can request for waivers. “under the FOIA, fee waivers are limited to situations in which a requester can show that the disclosure of the requested information is in the public interest because it is likely to contribute significantly to public understanding of the operations and activities of the government and is not primarily in the commercial interest of the requester”(Kwoka, 2015). Upon receiving a request, the time required to respond varies and depends on the agency. Also, the complexity of the request may determine the time required to process requests. For example, a simple request may require less time than a more complex request. However, the general rule is a prompt and fast response to requests to promote transparency within the federal agencies.

The Privacy Act was established to promote and defend the personal privacy of the people. The Act contained vital rights and prohibitions concerning the data and information that is held by the government. The right also provides that the federal agencies should provide their records to the public. “The Privacy Act prohibits the disclosure of a record about an individual from a system of records absent the written consent of the individual, unless the disclosure is pursuant to one of twelve statutory exceptions”(Act, 1993). It also ensures that the public has a means through which they “seek access to and amendment of their records, and sets forth various agency record-keeping requirements” (“Privacy Act of 1974,” 2015).

This research paper explores how the two provisions ensure and maintain a sense of transparency and government accountability to the public. Therefore, it is based on the objectives of exploring intensively into each provision to provide a practical understanding by investigating its scope and exemptions in access to information.

Literature Review

Freedom Of Information in the united states has been in existence since 1967 (EPA). Freedom Of Information Act in the united states allows people to ask for any kind of information they might need from the Federal agency records. The Act makes it an obligation for the federal agency to post online the information commonly requested by the general public. The freedom of information does not apply to information records held by the courts, the congress, or local government agencies. The local and the state government have their acts regarding the access of information that need to be consulted before one can acquire information from the two. The federal information held from the general public includes information protected by the Freedom Of Information Act exceptions. Some of these information includes geological information dealing with wells, information which is related to various financial institutions, information which is put together to enforce a certain law, information which contains sensitive private information, protected information by the law relating to the various inter or intra agencies, confidential financial information such as trade secrets, information explicitly prohibited from sharing by the federal government, rules, and practices of the agencies and confidential information relating to the relation with other nations and National Defense.

Freedom of Information act has been celebrated throughout the world as a prerequisite for democracy recognized by the congress, supreme court, and the president. However, in his article ‘Freedom of information beyond the freedom of information act,’ David argues that the freedom of information act is a transparency that is reactionary in the provision of information is based on an emergency request for the information in a procedural form. The Act in the political sense is substantive; it distributes the government’s information in an inegalitarian manner. It contributes to universalism and encircles bureaucratic policies that are domestic. The freedom of information act protects secretive information of the national security agencies and big corporates from scrutiny. If the claims put forward by this article are correct, the government require to re-evaluate the general information rotating around this Act.

On examing the freedom of information act in the united kingdom and similar acts for other parts of the world such as Newzealand, Ireland, Australia, and Canada, there are six basic information objectives of the Act. The analysis results show that the freedom of information act achieves its objectives, which included to heighten transparency and accountability in certain c circumstances. The Act, however, does not achieve the secondary objectives, which include increasing the public trust for the government, enhancing the decision-making process, increasing public inclusivity in the various projects, and improving the public understanding.

Privacy, which was amended in 1975, comes up with a fair way of collecting, maintaining, using, and disseminating information related to an individual (Boyne,2020). The need for a privacy act was prompt by the use of a computer to store information. This protects the information of an individual from being disclosed without their consent. In the past four decades, this privacy act has been in the laws formed and the litigations that have taken place in both the united states and the EU. The privacy act was obtained from privacy protection legislation, commonly referred to as the privacy act in the united states (Pinto, 2018). The need to protect private data has been championed by individuals, National Government Agencies, law enforcers, and commercial organizations. The collecting of personal information from these stakeholders caused fear among individuals. There has been a dilemma between national security and the protection of individual privacy. Countries with comprehensive data protection activities, such as Europe, usually criticize the incomplete protect Act in the united states.

Conclusion.

The privacy act is more is not well defined in the united states though it provides individual protection of an individual. Though beneficial to the nation, the activity level is a dilemma when it comes to issues relating to the matters of natural security due to the extent to which the government agencies can access the private information of an individual.

The freedom of information act has enabled an individual to obtain the information they require from the government. Freedom of expression act has not been very effective in increasing public participation in the matters that affect the state; the Act has not also been able to increase the trust that the people have for the government as most information they require is protected EPL. Furthermore, the more relevant information that the people require, such as that of the state and the local government, is not included in the scope of the freedom of information act.

References

Pozen, D. E. (2016). Freedom of information beyond the Freedom of Information Act. U. Pa. L. Rev., 165, 1097.

EPA, US. “FOIA.Gov – Freedom of Information Act: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ).” Foia.Gov, 2019, www.foia.gov/faq.html.

wire, P. P. and Ahmad, K. (2012a) Foundations of

Information Privacy and Data Protection,