Reference no: EM132309299

Question: Freedom of Information Act was first developed, the oldest in the world, in Sweden in 1766 and later signed into law by Lyndon Johnson, the president in 1966. This act promotes openness in the records of the government. It says the public has all rights to access to the records and information related to the government. This is simply, right to know act. This act provides access to the federal agency records thereby knowing the wide range of misconduct and secret threats related to public safety by the government. It plays a prominent role in keeping the government accountable and helps in maintaining transparency in everything. But not every issue is resolved by this law. Congress has set forth a few exceptions from accessing the particular kind of records for national security and personal privacy in other matters. Therefore, this law only allows accessing federal agency records. It does not get access to the records that are held by Congress, the federal judicial system, and state and local levels. Later, Freedom of information had a lot of amendments in its usage (Darch, 2009).

Concerning to this act, the government keeps the records which can be accessed related to this act openly. So if anything public wants to know, then they can make the request according to this act. This act is for government records only that too apart from the exceptions. Private companies need not disclose the information through this act as this is not applicable to private sectors. When the person makes a request to disclose the information, he need not explain the situation or any information, he can just need to ask for it, but if the agency could not give that record, he must say the reason behind it (Miletzki, 2017).

Open meetings legislations concept had been implemented where it allows access to the government meetings not only government records. Privacy or protection of data is the main part of the Freedom of Information development in most of the countries. These concepts are tied up one another for political benefit (Relyea, 2009).

References: Darch, C., & Underwood, P. G. (2009). Freedom of information and the developing world: The citizen, the state and models of openness. Elsevier.

Miletzki, J., & Broten, N. (2017). Development as freedom. Macat Library.

Relyea, H. C. (2009). Federal freedom of information policy: Highlights of recent developments. Government Information Quarterly, 26(2), 314-320.