Freedom of Information Act 2000 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Freedom of Information Act 2000 - Essay Example A campaign that finally resulted in the birth of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 on January 1, 2005. Notwithstanding these significant success chucked, a few years down the line the Act has generated mixed feelings and also generated unprecedented controversies. It is against this background that the central focus of this essay will be to conduct an exhaustive analysis of the most contending issues in the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Some observers are of the opinion that the innumerable exemptions in the Act have rendered it so feeble that it barely serves the purpose for which it was enacted. Whilst on the other hand, another school of thought holds a completely contrasting view of the Act as being an instrument that is lavishly granting arbitrary intrusive powers that are by themselves self-destructive; they primarily threaten social cohesion. The government of the United Kingdom enacted and implemented the Freedom of Information Act 2000 through her parliament to create the platform for individuals, institutions and organizations to be bestowed with the right to demand relevant information from public institutions. It should be noted that the enactment of the Act is fundamentally a fulfillment of the Labor Party's election campaign promise during the 1997 general elections. Basically, the F Basically, the Freedom of Information Act is part of the general legal system that already has a number of legislations that boarder on the rights of information. They include among others the Common Law of Confidentiality, the European Convention on Human Rights and the Data Protection Act 1998. Essentially, the legislation as implemented in the United Kingdom1 seeks to serve citizens within the broader framework of both the parliament of Scotland and the parliament of the United Kingdom. In Scotland it is called the "Scottish Act 2002" whilst the name remains unchanged in the United Kingdom. It became imperative to structure the Act to be in consonance with the juridical and public regulatory system in Scotland as means of ensuring the workability of the Act across geopolitical areas; in Scotland for instance, the parliament has an enormous control of the majority of public institutions making it thus prudent to make realistic adjustments to accommodate this difference, hence a second legislation dubbed the "Act of the Scottish Parliament" was enacted to bridge this gap. It is in many ways very similar to the main Act (The Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002). Meanwhile the Freedom of Information Act is limited in its application to institutions and bodies that are out of the legal and geographical jurisdiction of the United Kingdom; they include territories abroad as well as crown dependencies. Taking cognizance of the sensitive nature of the Act the government was convinced that the most prudent to manage the process is to adopt a gradualist approach to guide the implementation process. Consequently, the Act was implemented in phases culminating into the tentative Act that guaranteed access to public information been eventually enforced on January 1, 2005. A look at the Act shows well over 100, 000 public institutions that have being listed as being eligible to release information to any individual, public interest organisation or institution (see Brooke, 2005 for detailed