News item | 08-12-2023 | 2:00 PM
At the proposal of State Secretary Van Huffelen of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, the Council of Ministers has approved the Multi-Year Plan for Public Access and Information Management (2024-2025). It sets out how administrative bodies in the national government give substance to the ambition for an open and responsive government. In the coming years, we will gradually work towards the associated information management.
Since the entry into force of the Open Government Act (Woo), the Minister or State Secretary of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, together with the Minister of Education, Culture and Science, has the obligation to periodically send a Multi-Year Plan to the States General. This Multi-Year Plan is the third in a row.
This Multi-Year Plan describes what an open and responsive government entails on the basis of four pillars, namely:
- openness and disclosure based on social need,
- professional management of information,
- increasing sustainable accessibility and
- working environment for a responsive government.
The Multi-Year Plan also reports on progress and outlines what is needed to achieve the goals in the long term.
Multi-year plan as compass
State Secretary Van Huffelen: “As a government, we want to be clear and transparent for society. That’s why we’re working on proactive disclosure, so that people no longer have to submit requests but can find information themselves. We will also focus even more on responding to Woo requests more quickly. This requires us to work in a better, smarter way, so that substantive pieces are filtered from messages such as ‘I’m a little late for the meeting.’
Recognizable files
Openness and transparency about government information are reflected in everyday actions within government. For example, the government has the ambition that all chat messages from key officials and ministers are archived sustainably. This requires that new, not yet existing, techniques must be developed and at the same time all privacy legislation must be complied with. The central government will also proactively make information public even more than before. Other priorities include improving the working method for handling a Woo request and archiving the social media of ministers. Finally, this plan pays specific attention to new ministers and the updated oath of office. The importance of openness and good information provision will be included in 2024
A big task
This Multi-Year Plan is the follow-up to the 2019 Multi-Year Information Management Plan, which, after the report ‘Ongekend injustice’ by the Parliamentary Committee on Childcare Allowance (POK), was tightened up in the generic action plan Open op Orde in 2021.
The ambition of an open and responsive government is comprehensive. In recent years, government organizations have been working on improved information management and increased disclosure. With the Multi-Year Plan, they are taking the next steps to further improve the technical facilities and systems, among other things. The first improvements are now visible, as shown by the maturity measurement included in the plan.