Publication Type
Magazine Article
Version
acceptedVersion
Publication Date
4-2004
Abstract
A few years ago, I sat at a table in a Washington think-tank with a group of mid-level Japanese officials. They were spending several weeks in the United States on a study tour, and I was meeting with them to give a talk on governance and access to information. Japan had recently passed, but not yet implemented, a sweeping freedom of information law, and the bureaucrats were puzzled about how they were to implement it. Or even whether they should implement it. After all, as one earnest young woman asked, if the government starts giving people information, they might want to do something with that information. “And what if they use it the wrong way?”
Discipline
Political Science | Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration
Research Areas
Political Science
Publication
Harvard International Review
Volume
26
Issue
1
First Page
18
Last Page
21
ISSN
0739-1854
Publisher
Harvard International Relations Council
Citation
FLORINI, Ann, "Behind closed doors: Governmental transparency gives way to secrecy" (2004). Research Collection School of Social Sciences. Paper 2323.
https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/2323
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/2323
Copyright Owner and License
Author
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://hir.harvard.edu/article/?a=1209
Included in
Political Science Commons, Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons