Il diritto di accesso generalizzato e l’emergenza: rischi ed opportunità in uno Stato tecnologico

The right of general access and the emergency: risks and opportunities in a technological state

Abstract

The paper aims to analyze the right of access to public information and its resistance to the organizational inadequacies of the public administration and the state of emergency resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic. Over the years, the right of access to public information has increasingly become a founding right of the new democratic society based on new technologies and new generation rights. The right of access will be analyzed in the various shapes, the result of the legislative and jurisprudential evolution that affected both the object of access and the legitimate subjects. Thus, from mere procedural access, with a particular private interest, today a generalized and substantially unconditional interest is recognized, inherent in a strong public profile. During the epidemiological emergency from Covid-19, all administrative procedures were suspended, including those relating to access. The reasons are many and can be traced back to both organizational profiles and those inherent to digital skills and the digitization of the Public Administration. The question is: therefore, whether this right, designed to be implemented by overcoming those physical limits that often distinguish it and developed in conjunction with the digitization of the public administration, should not be guaranteed with even greater force precisely in those moments where other personal freedoms are restricted. All this also following the administrative (not least the question relating to the publication of the minutes of the Technical Scientific Committee) and constitutional jurisprudence which has repeatedly addressed the role of transparency, digitalization and the right of access. Such a reflection turns out to be even more relevant if we analyze the state of digital advancement and the limits that remain today in the “form of technological state” which represents the dimension where fundamental rights are protected by our legal system.

Keywords: Right of access; Fundamental rights; Transparency; Covid-19 Emergency;
Digitalization.