Its aim is to “strengthen our democracy through greater transparency”, it says on page 9 of the coalition agreement, which is about 150 pages in total (PDF) of Traffic Light from 2021: “We are guided by the principles of open government action – transparency, participation and collaboration.” For this purpose, among other things, they wanted to use existing federal information laws (ifg, UIG And wig) into a federal transparency law and thus these outdated laws would be reformed. And rather than releasing information only upon individuals’ requests, as was previously the case, authorities should in the future proactively put their files online using modernized legislation based on the Hamburg model.
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But good plans will probably achieve nothing. Because there are still people in the civil service of the Federal Ministry of the Interior, which is responsible for the development of the government draft (bmi) Apparently an influential opponent of government transparency. He had already obstructed the creation of a freedom of information act planned by the red-green coalition under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder since 1998. The design was never finished. Ultimately, some members of the SPD and the Greens, with the support of the then-opposition FDP faction, presented their parliamentary draft in 2005, so that the IFG could be implemented as a final project in early 2006. Red-green alliance.
Question “Excessive”
A similar disaster is currently looming, especially as signs of a possible premature end to the alliance are growing. The draft bill, which should actually be available in 2023, is still not in sight. The ministry gave vague answers to questions about the project. Journalists who also inquire about the personal interests of Minister Nancy Feser (SPD) and want to know when she last inquired about the civil service under her leadership find themselves exposed to accusations from the ministry. “There have been attempts to observe the behavior of the minister.” said an internal statement provided to a spokesperson, which is available online. heise. BMI did not want to provide any further information on when the minister was last inquired about the work.
When federal Interior Minister Nancy Feser asks about the status of work on a law in her office, her legal department declares it a private matter.
(Picture: Peter Julich, BMI.bund,
A spokesman for the authority said ministers were last “concerned” about the matter in mid-September. His ministry does not want to disclose what exactly Feser’s involvement was in the bill for which he is responsible. “Inferring from information behavior the minister’s material interest in the development of a specific bill that is not problematic in the current political discussion… can therefore only give rise to inaccurate fake news, the creation of which BMI does not provide detailed information about “There is information about the behavior of the head of the authority involved,” her legal department wrote to the press department.
However, the fact that the missing bill is not currently part of the political discussion is clearly wrong. Due to the government’s ongoing delays in the project, a “Transparency Act Coalition” formed in April from a total of ten civil society organizations and in a petition called on the ministry to finally implement the federal Transparency Act promised in the coalition agreement. Went. The coalition includes Representativeswatch.de, the German Society for Freedom of Information, the German Association of Journalists, Fragdenstat, Lobbycontrol, Network Research, Transparency International Germany and Wikimedia Germany. Within a few weeks, the appeal received signatures from over 50,000 supporters on relevant online platforms.
(tig)
