How to grasp the openness and confidentiality of government information

Article 6 of the Regulations stipulates: "Administrative organs shall timely and accurately disclose government information." At the same time, it also stipulates that before the information is made public, the administrative organ shall conduct a confidential review of the government information to be made public. After the implementation of the regulations, how should the administrative organs determine the boundaries between information disclosure and confidentiality? How to prevent the government from failing to fulfill the obligation of government information disclosure under the pretext of confidentiality? Professor Jiang Ming 'an, director of the Center for Constitutional and Administrative Law Studies in Peking University, believes that in practice, it may be necessary to apply different rules according to different situations to correctly determine the boundaries between disclosure and confidentiality: First, laws and regulations have clear disclosure or confidentiality provisions for certain information. In this case, unless the parties apply to the competent authorities to confirm that the corresponding laws are unconstitutional and illegal, the corresponding information must be made public or confidential; Second, laws and regulations do not stipulate the disclosure or confidentiality of certain information. In this case, unless the administrative organ has evidence to prove that the disclosure of the information will endanger national security, public security, economic security and social stability, it must disclose the corresponding information; Thirdly, laws and regulations stipulate the confidentiality of certain information, but the scope, conditions or objects of confidentiality are not clear. Whether the corresponding information can be disclosed to a specific object within a certain scope and under certain conditions depends on the interpretation of relevant laws and regulations (rather than the information preservation organ) and the previous precedents of the court. If the relevant government departments do not decide whether to disclose or keep confidential the corresponding information according to the above three different situations, but do not fulfill the obligation of government information disclosure under the pretext of keeping confidential, then the administrative counterpart may report or apply for reconsideration or bring a lawsuit according to the provisions of Article 33 of the Regulations. The competent department may give administrative sanctions or pursue other legal responsibilities according to the provisions of Articles 34 and 35 of the Regulations. Mo Yuchuan, on the other hand, thinks that in order to prevent some government departments from failing to fulfill the obligation of government information disclosure under the pretext of confidentiality review mechanism, some provisions in the regulations have made clear requirements by enumerating, which is helpful to ensure the accuracy and timeliness of government information disclosure and to handle the relationship between government information disclosure and confidentiality. At the same time, he also believes that in order to prevent the scope of "exceptions" from expanding, we should formulate supporting specific institutional measures and appropriately refine the contents stipulated in the regulations, so that the administrative organs can have operational basis. Of course, the interpretation of these regulations must conform to the basic spirit and legislative purpose of the regulations and follow the requirements of "openness is the principle, confidentiality is the exception". The so-called "exception" must have clear and specific laws and regulations, as well as relevant regulations of high-level countries, and relevant disputes must be finally resolved by judicial organs.