Viestintäyksiköiden rooli kaupunkiorganisaatioiden vastatessa julkisuuslain mukaisiin tietopyyntöihin

Abstract

Tutkimuksen tarkoituksena on selvittää, kuinka kuntien viestintäyksiköt osallistuvat medialta ja yksityishenkilöiltä tulevien tietopyyntöjen käsittelyyn. Tarkoitus on lisätä ymmärrystä siitä, millainen viestintäyksikköjen rooli on julkisuuslain mukaisissa tietopyynnöissä. Tutkimuskohteena ovat julkisuuslain mukaiset viranomaiselle osoitetut yleisöjulkisuutta koskevat tietopyynnöt.

The principle of the publicity of governmental records and public access to governmental information is written in the Finnish Constitution (PL 12.2 §) and seen as a basic right. The Act on the Openness of Government Activities is the lex generalis and is also known as the Finnish freedom of information act (FOIA). According to the Finnish legislation, it is everyone’s right to request information from governmental records. It is the public authorities’ duty to disclose the requested information or give reasons based on legislation about why the records are not disclosed. Communication units are parts of municipalities as local authorities and this article examines the roles of the units when municipalities are answering the freedom of information act requests. The empirical data consist of two small types of research on communication units and an analysis on the communication guidelines of (different) cities. 16 cities participated in the research and the guidelines of 10 cities’ were analysed. The result suggests that communication units have four distinguished roles in FOIA request processes. Communication units and communication professionals are either processing requests by themselves, delivering them to other unit(s) or taking care of (supervising) them, or are eventually ignorant of them and assuming that other units are processing them. From this study, it can be concluded that openness and the work of communication units have significant benefits for the openness of local authorities and for the freedom of information.