Freeway - An open society

An open society

In Sweden we have a principle of public access to official records. It means that all Swedish citizens have the right to take part in almost all public documents that can be found at government institutions and local government authorities. Ex of public documents are protocols, official letters and similar things.

The principle of public access to official records consist of a few different parts. One of them is "the publicity of documents". It means that people in general have the right to be present at negotiations in court and other meetings where state and local decisions are made. Exceptions for this could be if there is to many people compered to the size of the room or to maintain the public order.

Another one is the freedom of the press act. It contains public documents which mass media take part in. They have the right to publicise these documents in newspapers and other printed writings.

Media
We also have something called "the freedom of publishing" that gives us the opportunity to give information to papers for publishing. The information teller then has the right to be anonymous.
Like if some students at our school, Parkskolan should notice that a teacher has embezzled money belonging to the school. Then they could go to ÖA, our local paper and give them the information about the teacher and what he or she has done. Then they can print it in the paper. If the teacher in question wants to know who has given them the information, the newspaper has an obligation not to report their source.
When the teacher ask for this information he/she is committing a crime, because he/she doesn’t have the right even to try to find out who has reported him/her.

Exceptions
There are some exceptions when it comes to the principle of public access to official records. That’s when the document hurt or insult a private person. For example, if a girl at our school goes to our school-nurse and finds out that she is pregnant and decides to have an abortion. The nurse doesn’t have the right to give the girls journal to anyone, not even her parents.

The purpose of the principle of public access to official records is that we should have the opportunity to check what our politicians and civil servants do with our tax money. etc.
Thanks to this principle we have been able to expose politicians who have spent tax money on porno clubs. The principle is useful, because people in general have the opportunity to be informed about what’s happening in the society.

We think this is a good principle because it gives us the possibility to take part in things, that otherwise easily could be hidden from us.
It’s good with a open society.