Research into government confidentiality practices
In a democracy, the government must strive for openness. But sometimes confidentiality is necessary to protect interests such as security or privacy. The Dutch Open Government Act (WOO) contains a right to access government information, but also provides for exceptions.
The very nature of confidentiality means it is difficult to research. How does the government deal with this authority and what information remains hidden from society? This is the question that Louis Honée, a PhD candidate at the Department of Constitutional and Administrative Law, will be working on in the coming year together with Annemarie Drahmann (UU), Maarten Marx (UvA) and specialists from Dialogic Innovatie & Interactie in the field of quantitative data analysis and machine learning to make confidentiality practice more transparent. These methods are aimed at making it possible to identify which categories of information remain confidential and on the basis of what reasoning the government considers confidentiality necessary in individual cases.
The research is being conducted within an emerging field of study: law and technology. It combines legal research methods with quantitative empirical methods aimed at analysing large-scale texts. The research is funded by a grant from the Dutch civil society coalition Maatschappelijke Coalitie Over Informatie Gesproken and the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations in the context of the Open Government Action Plan (OGP) and the international Open Government Partnership.
More information (in Dutch) about the Wet Open Overheid (WOO)