Article
100 of the 1814 Constitution was amended in October 2004
to include a specific right of access to access documents
and attend court proceedings and meetings. The changes were
recommended by the Governmental Commission on Freedom of
Expression.(1) The new Article 100(5) now
states:
Everyone
has a right of access to the documents of the State and
of the municipal administration and a right to be present
at sittings of the courts and of administrative bodies
elected by the people. Exceptions may be laid down in
law in order to protect personal data security and other
weighty reasons.
•
Undernourished people (% of total population),
2000/03: N/A
•
Population with sustainable access to an improved
water source (%), 2002: 100
Source:
UN Development Program, Human Development Reports
Data
The
Freedom
of Information Act of 1970 provides for any person to
have a broad right of access to official documents held
by public authorities.(2) Official documents
are defined as information which is recorded and can be
listened to, displayed or transferred and which is either
created by the authority and dispatched or has been received
by the authority. All records are indexed at the time of
creation or receipt and some ministries make the electronic
indexes available on the Internet or through e-mail.
Requests
can be made in any form including anonymously and must be
responded to immediately. Internal guidelines issued by
the Ministry of Justice say that requests should be responded
to in three days. The Ombudsman in 2000 ruled, "It
should be possible to decide most disclosure requests the
same day or at least in the course of one to three working
days, provided that no special, practical difficulties were
involved."(3) Release may be delayed,
"if the documents then available give a directly misleading
impression of the case and that public disclosure could
therefore be detrimental to obvious public or private interests."
There
is a broad exemption for internal documents when the agency
has not completed its handling of the case unless the agency
has dispatched the document. Documents are also exempt from
release if they are made secret by another law or if they
refer to national security, national defense or international
relations, financial management, the minutes of the Council
of State, appointments or protections in the civil service,
regulatory or control measures, test answers, annual fiscal
budgets or long-term budgets, and photographs of persons
entered in a personal data register.
In
2001, the Parliament amended the act to allow applicants
to civil service positions and promotions to refuse consent
to have their names disclosed. The Ombudsman criticized
the government in his 2001, 2002 and 2003 reports on the
implementation of the amendment as bodies were refusing
in many cases to disclose any names or consider the public
interest in high government positions. In 2003, he stated
"it would appear that the administration is practicing
the provision in a more restrictive manner than appears
to be the intention of the lawmaker."
If
access is denied, individuals can appeal to a higher authority
and then to the Storting's Ombudsman
for Public Administration or a court. The Ombudsman's
decisions are not binding but are generally followed.(4)
There have been very few court cases.
The
Ombudsman conducted a systematic review of FOI practices
in 2001 and stated in his annual report that:
More
than 30 years have passed since the Freedom of Information
Act was passed. However, disclosure complaints show that
there is room for improvement in application of the law
in practice. Work to ensure that extended freedom of information
is routinely considered is still important and must continuously
be done to achieve a more favourable attitude towards
extended disclosure.
The
government released a white paper in April 1998 proposing
changes in the law.(5) These include changing
the subject of the request to information from documents,
limiting the internal documents exemption, and making the
law consistent with European Union requirements on access
to environmental information. In October 2004, the government
announced that it was planning to introduce a bill to replace
the Act with a new law that "provides for greater transparency
than the current Freedom of Information Act."(6)
A bill was introduced in 2005.
Norway
signed the Aarhus Convention in June 1998 and ratified it
in May 2003. The Environmental
Information Act was approved in May 2003.(7)
The
1998 Security
Act sets rules on classification of information.(8)
It creates four levels of classification and requires that
information cannot be classified for more than 30 years.
The National Security Authority enforces the Act. Starting
in 1988, Norway began releasing en mass most documents over
30 years old.(9) The Act on Defence Secrets
prohibits the disclosing of military secrets by government
officials and also the collection (sketches, photographs
and notes) and disclosure of secrets by others including
journalists.(10) Articles 90 and 91 of
the Criminal Code criminalize the disclosure of secrets.
Imprisonment can be up to ten years.
The
Personal
Data Act allows individuals to access and correct files
containing personal information about themselves held by
public and private bodies.(11) It is overseen
and enforced by the Datatilsynet
(The Data Inspectorate).(12)
The
Archives Act of 1992 sets a thirty years rule for the release
of information.(13) A new Archives Act
sets rules for the collection and registration of documents.(14)
The
Municipalities Act of 25 September 1992 requires that meetings
of local governments are open unless subject to a statutory
duty of confidentiality.
2.
Act of 19 June 1970 relating to public access to documents
in the public administration (lov om offentlighet i forvaltningen
av 19 juni 1970 nr 69). Amended by Act No. 47 of 11 June
1982 and Act no. 86 of 17 December 1982 and Act of 10 January
1997 No. 7. http://www.ub.uio.no/ujur/ulovdata/lov-19700619-069-eng.pdfUpdate
3.
Case 2000-0400 in Sivilombudsmannen, The Parliamentary
Ombudsman - Norway Annual Report 2000.
5.
See Fredrik Sejersted, Norway: The Act on Public Access
to Documents: Current Frustrations and Proposals for Reform,
European Public Law Journal, Vol 5, No. 1, 1999.
6.
The Speech from the Throne by his Majesty the King on
the Occasion of the Opening of the 149th Session of the
Storting, 2 October 2004.
9.
For information generally on national security issues
in Norway and the previous system of classification, see
Nils Peter Gleditsch, Freedom of Expression, Freedom of
Information and National Security: The Case of Norway, in
Security and Liberty: National Security, Freedom of Expression
and Access to Information (Coliver et al, Ed), Martinus
Nijhoff Publishers.
1)
Voice and Accountability: 1.53
2) Political Instability and Violence: 1.53
3) Government Effectiveness: 1.97
4) Regulatory Burden: 1.33
5) Rule of Law: 1.95
6) Control of Corruption: 2.11
