The administration dislikes
sitting in a house of glass

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The principle of publicity in administration aims at establishing informational justice between the general public and the administration. Informational justice is understood here as a balanced level of information between the administrative authorities on the one hand and the general public on the other. The law ensures this informational justice by granting an individual access to the files and information available in the administration, which also includes electronically stored information. The law, or in some cases even the cantonal constitutions, grants every person a judicially enforceable right of access to administrative files. The person making the request, for his part, does not have to give reasons why he is making the request and why he needs the information. In this respect, access is not subject to any prerequisites. The only restriction is that the request must be for a finalized file and not for personal notes of the administrative employee. The requested administrative body must examine the request and can only refuse it if there are overriding reasons of secrecy.

A long tradition of public courts and parliaments

Judicial publicity and parliamentary publicity have existed since the French Revolution. It is obvious that the cantonal administrations, as well as the individual offices in the federal administration, were initially somewhat unenthusiastic about the idea of also introducing the principle of public access in the administration. However, the principle of openness is of fundamental importance for the functioning of the democratic constitutional state in the administration as well. It is about the control of administrative action by the public and about the well-founded support of the formation of opinion and will by the public and those entitled to vote. However, the principle of publicity also serves science and the economy. In the meantime, the state administration has acquired a weight in the entire organization of the state that can hardly be overlooked and has an immense amount of expert knowledge at its disposal. The media have succeeded on several occasions in uncovering unfair dealings by public authorities and private individuals in public procurement, especially in the IT sector. This shows that the control of the administration by the public, today very often exercised by journalists, is of great importance. However, the administration also goes a long way toward meeting the need for information by making raw data in the sense of basic data available electronically via open data portals, which is of great value for science and the economy in particular.

«The media have succeeded on several occasions in

uncovering unfair dealings by public authorities and

private individuals in public procurement, especially in the IT sector.»

The introduction of the principle of public access at the federal level was rather slow. It took more than 20 years from the first attempts in parliament in 1980 until 2004, when the Federal Act on the Principle of Public Access to the Administration (BGÖ) was passed by the Federal Assembly. As a pioneer canton, Bern should be mentioned, which included the principle of public access to administration in its then new cantonal constitution as early as 1993. However, the cantonal administration in Bern initially received hardly any requests for information from the media.

Lively use

Today, the picture is very different. Private individuals, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and, above all, journalists make extensive use of the right of access to administrative files. If the requested administrative authority refuses to grant access to the files, the matter is brought before the courts. The Federal Supreme Court also frequently deals with administrative public access. Court practice has contributed…