A COMPARATIVE VIEW: ADMINISTRATIVE SECRECY IN BRITAIN.

Great Britain is one of the countries where the issue of administrative secrecy has recently come to the surface in a variety of ways, and has led to changes in habitual practices and responses. The debate over the condition of the civil service has raised new interest in the appropriateness of secrecy in the operation of British government, and has led to efforts to reformulate criteria for drawing lines between the realms of secrecy and disclosure. This article, in an attempt to look into the recent controversies and changes, recalls the setting of traditional administrative secrecy in Great Britain. It examines how, in the name of the larger constitutional system, a kind of administrative ideology of secrecy had developed, and how it gave rise to certain policies and rules designed to implement that commitment. The institutional and attitudinal setting in which the British administrative process has developed made it possible for habits of secrecy to flourish with relatively few checks and challenges. One of the sharp criticisms of the British approach to official secrecy has been that it not only relies on the criminal law, but also that the law itself was a hastily drafted affair designed to solve the problems of a particular historical interlude.