In the first full year of the Open Government Act (Woo), ministries are still far too slow in handling requests for openness from citizens. On average, processing a Woo request, formerly a Wob request, took 172 days in 2023, concludes transparency watchdog Open State. That is five days more than in 2022. The legal period for processing a Woo request is 28 days, with a delay this can increase to 42 days.
Citizens, often journalists, can use Woo requests to force the government to reveal documents, for example about the development of policy or decisions.
However, in 2023, approximately one third more pages will have been released with 80,000 pages and more than one and a half times as many requests have been processed by ministries. That doesn’t make Serv Wiemers of Open State any softer. “If the government were to see public access as a human right, which it is, then the number of requests would not make much difference. If more people turn out for elections, we do not say that the extra people should not vote.”
Public, unless
On Tuesday, Open State will present the report ‘Leaves on the trail’ to the House. This is the third year in a row that this organization has made such an inventory. In May 2022, the Government Information (Public Access) Act (Wob) was exchanged for the Woo, which had to achieve a different basic attitude: public access, unless. But contrary to promises about transparency and the new law, the processing time is still running out. The Ministry of Finance takes the cake: requests take 239 days there. The Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW) is doing relatively the best, with ‘only’ 91 days.
Because averages can be pushed up by extremes, Open State also looks at the median. That is, the middle one in a row of Woo requests in order of processing time. This median, the typical Woo request, takes 114 days to resolve. More than 56 percent include requests that yield only 50 pages of information. The median size is 32 pages.
Open State calls for an end to the ‘initials line’, a series of initials from managers at a ministry that are necessary to process a request. According to Open State, it should be sufficient for two professionals to judge whether so-called grounds for exception apply. These are legal grounds on which information does not have to be shared, for example if the privacy or security of, for example, non-public persons or organizations is at stake. The so-called personal policy views of civil servants can also remain confidential under certain circumstances.
Paint away
Another time saver that Open State suggests is to stop varnishing pages that are ‘out of scope’. There is no legal basis for this and it only seems to make applicants less wise than they are, according to Open State.
The Netherlands stands out in stark contrast to surrounding countries. In the United Kingdom, 85 percent of requests for public access are processed on time, the mirror image of the Dutch government, which did not meet the legal deadline in 83 percent of requests. Previous research has already shown that in the Netherlands citizens make fewer than six requests per 100,000 inhabitants, while in other countries this amounts to dozens.
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The Wob becomes the Woo: a look back on 40 years of firsts, black-lacquered pages and political arbitrariness