Experiences in many countries with Freedom of Information acts or Access to Information legislation have raised a number of shared problems and concerns, but there has been very little discussion among historians and archivists internationally about dealing with these issues as well as reflecting on the benefits of access legislation. One of these issues is that the implementation of FOI conflicts with the orderly processing of Government records because it is difficult to do both things at the same time. As FOI is implemented over time, it becomes harder and harder for hard‐pressed officials to fulfill FOI requests within the legislated time limit. This is a problem that seems to be endemic to FOI regimes in many countries.
This volume is one of the first to compare and reflect upon both the successes and difficulties of FOI across the world. Written by an international mixture of senior archivists and historians, it will appeal across the disciplines of history and archive studies.