Make FOIA information available through open data platform (NL0042)

What is the public problem that the commitment will address? FOIA information often lacks accessability and transparency, both in terms of content and procedures. Promoting public access and a more transparent government by making the Wob (FOIA) information more transparent when it is published, will solve this issue. The Wob, which has so far been the most important instrument for obtaining government information, is expected to be transferred to the Open Government Act (Woo) in 2021. The Woo has a broader scope and aims to move from passive disclosure to active disclosure of government information. Furthermore, the Woo requires a transparency register. An anti-abuse provision is included for the information requests themselves. With the introduction of the Woo, the Wob will lapse. In addition to active disclosure of information, the Woo asks government organizations to put their information management in order. This action point offers government organizations the opportunity to prepare for this. With this, the introduction of the Woo offers governments an opportunity to organize this at inter-administrative level.

What is the commitment? The proposed commitment is a sequel to the Open Wob commitment from the third Open Government action plan (2018-2020) (commitment 5). From the start, the working group has expressed a clear commitment to scaling up the results: 1. Making sure more authorities are making available FOIA information in standardized open formats. So that they become public in an interchangeable and comparable manner; 2. The results are developed into a widely applicable information model; 3. Information is made available on a national platform for open government information. 14

How will the commitment contribute to solving the public problem? The main objective is to promote public access and a transparent government by providing more insight into FOIA information, both in terms of content and procedure. A number of standards have been established for this, on the basis of which governments can publish public government information in the form of open data in a simple and standardized way.

Why is this commitment relevant to OGP values? Improvement of accountability by applying the internationally applicable FAIR principles. This allows citizens and civil society to see whether the actions of public administration are in line with the general interest. Coupled with this is accountability by the public administration. The FOIA-process is the most important instrument in the Netherlands for obtaining information from the Public Administration. When this process improves, it automatically becomes easier to account for the administration. In addition, this contributes to transparency: insight into the actions of the government.

Additional information The participating government organizations that are going to apply the Open FOIA will provide the required budget and personnel capacity.2 The Ministery of the Interior and Kingdom Relations will contribute €15.000. Milestone Activity with a verifiable deliverable Start date: End date: Drawing up a standard to be able to publish Wob information (requests, decisions and appendices) in a comparable manner. This standard includes: - The development of the semantic standard into an information model; - A message standard to exchange in a technically similar way, API. January 1 2021 February 2021 The FOIA information is made available as open data as much as possible. The PLOOI platform is the preferred platform. Q2, Q3 2021 Q4 2021 A track to recruit a diverse group of at least twenty government organizations and to help them in making their FOIA documents available as open data in accordance with the standard. Q3 2021 Q4 2021 2 The implementation of the commitment depends on these contributions. In any case, budget is available up to and including Q1 2021. 15 With the help of online manuals, stakeholder group and a number of information sessions. Exploring how management of the standard and the availability of information can be guaranteed. December 2022 Tracking changes of the standard, with VNG Realisatie and others On going