In North Holland, municipalities and the province are increasingly keeping documents secret. That concludes NH News after an investigation for which an appeal was made under the Government Information (Public Access) Act (Wob).
In 2019, a total of 1175 documents were declared secret by the 47 municipalities and the province. That is 83 more than the year before. It mainly concerns financial documents and building plans.
Especially in the municipalities of Uithoorn and Hoorn, more documents were kept secret last year than in 2018. For example, in 2018 Uithoorn kept 11 documents secret, in 2019 there were 43. In the municipality of Hoorn, at least 44 were declared secret in 2018, last year these were there are 72. Of these, 37 documents qualify as ‘confidential’, which is a different status from ‘secret’. For example, the security of those documents is slightly less strict.
As public as possible
Despite a decrease compared to 2018, the municipality of Amsterdam kept most of the documents secret with 349 documents. The Court of Audit is the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area critical about the actions of the municipality. That court of account states that too much is kept secret and that this also happens for too long.
“The attitude and culture of the organization are not entirely focused on ‘as public as possible'”, says General Audit Chamber director Jan de Ridder. “That is their slogan: ‘public, unless’. But we wonder whether that is actually in the actions and thinking of those involved.”
In a response, both the city council and the city council of Amsterdam say that they endorse the conclusions and recommendations and are going to work on improving the working method.
Ensure transparency
Professor of Constitutional and Administrative Law Wim Voermans of Leiden University cannot come up with an explanation for the increasing numbers of documents kept secret. He says he is concerned about transparency at governments.
“They are not very inclined to share much with the public. In addition, there is talk of ‘Wobstruction’: they often have documents not properly archived. If they are then retrieved, they cannot find them. Then they stretch time or pieces of secret. to declare.” According to Voermans, governments should make documents public more actively, where you publish quickly in a findable place. “There is insufficient investment in this.”
Emeritus professor of administrative law Douwe Jan Elzinga of the University of Groningen also believes that openness should be the standard and confidentiality the exception. “I can imagine that the number has increased, because municipalities are also being given more and more tasks. But if documents are declared confidential, it must be thoroughly tested. Confidentiality is sometimes taken very quickly.”
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