access to information

in collaboration with or funded by:

What you will find in this database...

Initial Launch

March 2017

covering

jurisdictions

Legal Atlas is developing a global toolkit for Access to Information laws (A2I). The toolkit will compile national, regional, and international legal frameworks to produce a full picture of the laws that define the practical realities for access to information, transparency, and accountability for a number of countries.

Current design is targeting the following areas of law:

1. Right to know legislation – laws that establish and implement the public’s right to know, or to request and receive information from the government. This can include a wide variety of laws ranging from general freedom of information laws, to specific transparency and open government requirements.
2. State secrets legislation – laws that limit the public’s right to know by establishing the type of information that may be classified as a ‘secret.’
3. Freedom of the Press – laws that secure the right to access and report on information obtained by journalists in their investigations, including the ability to protect sources.
4. Information Privacy – laws that protect the personal information of individuals as collected by private companies and the government. One of the reasons for such laws being developed is due to cross-border data flows. To exchange data with other countries, such as those in the EU, countries must have laws in place that offer protections before those businesses can legally transfer information to them, impacting the scope and opportunity for economic exchange.
5. Cross-border data flows – information flows between economies have dramatically increased in volume as IT businesses globalize their information processing services via the Internet. Cross-border privacy rules (CBPRs) are a set of rules developed by an organization who commits to apply these rules to its activities involving transfers of personal information across borders. Business, government and consumer organizations utilize the implementation of CBPRs as a way of ensuring accountability of information flows to make organizations keep their original privacy promise to the customer.
6. Binding Corporate Rules – a legal tool that can be used by multinational companies to ensure an adequate level of protection for the intra-group transfers of personal data between countries. In practice in the EU, the use of BCRs requires the approval of each of the EU data protection authorities from whose country the data are to be transferred.

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