Source: Blic
Freedom of information includes of necessity both an active and a passive component. The former, of course, implies an obligation of the government to grant proper treatment to all requests for free access to information submitted by citizens, journalists, media, NGOs, political parties - the public in general. The latter, however, implies something more - an obligation for the government to provide the public with as much information as possible on what it does and how it does it before someone actually requests it. Even if the government complies with this second obligation (and it is well known how extremely problematic this can be in our country), it is not irrelevant how exactly it does that. Marshall McLuhan, a famous media theorist, rightly said that even the choice of media through which information is conveyed to someone is in fact very important information.Of course, whether the government conveys the information it owes to the public through a town-crier, a window clerk, a bulletin board or the Internet makes a huge difference. We live in the 21st century, the age of information technology. Presumably, this fact alone ought to make it sufficiently clear to everyone that the Internet, used in combination with other media, is simply indispensable.
In conclusion, it hardly takes a Marshall McLuhan to see that the fact that most public authorities, including even one Ministry, do not have websites is a brazen sign of their disrespect for the rights of the public and says a great deal about their awareness of the age we live in. The author is the Commissioner for Information
