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The following is issued on behalf of the Legislative Council Secretariat:
The Legislative Council (LegCo) Secretariat (the Secretariat) announced today (December 17) that an access to information policy (the policy) would be implemented on January 1, 2014 to facilitate public access to information and records kept by the Secretariat.
The policy formalises the Secretariat's present practice of dealing with access requests by setting out the procedure by which information or records may be obtained, the exemptions applied in refusing disclosure, the response time to access requests, the fees and charges involved, and the review and complaints mechanism for refusals.
Speaking at the press briefing to announce the implementation of the access to information policy, the Secretary General of the Secretariat, Mr Kenneth Chen, said that when formulating the policy, the Secretariat has taken into account the Code on Access to Information of the HKSAR Government, the records declassification process and records access practices in a number of jurisdictions and international organisations and the Principles of Access to Archives issued by the International Council on Archives so as to adopt the best practice relating to the maximum records closure periods and exempted categories.
Before the implementation of the policy, a two-month public consultation exercise was conducted to gauge public views on the proposed policy.
"The response to the public consultation exercise was positive in general and the views obtained were useful and constructive. Having considered the findings and views obtained, one of the exempted categories, i.e. 'information or records considered by the Commission to be not suitable for disclosure', which was originally included in the proposed policy, was removed," added Mr Chen.
While unclassified and classified records will be automatically open to the public upon expiry of their respective maximum records closure periods, i.e. 20 years for unclassified records and 50 years for classified records, Mr Chen emphasised that members of the public may at any time submit applications to access these closed records before expiry of their closure periods, and the requests will be accepted unless the requested records fall under the exempted categories of information and records specified in the policy.
Starting from January 1, 2014, members of the public may contact the Secretariat's Access to Information Officer to request access to closed information and records in person, by phone, mail, fax or email. The information and records requested will normally be provided within 21 working days.
Upon obtaining the Council's authorisation in April 2014, details of the maximum records closure periods for all closed records and the conduct of declassification reviews of classified information or records will also be incorporated into the policy.
For details of the policy, the findings and views obtained through the public consultation exercise, or downloading the application form for access to closed information and records, please visit the Open LegCo website at www.legco.gov.hk/general/english/open-legco/index.html.
Ends/Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Issued at HKT 22:41
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