Feature
The committee that decides what counts as a public document
Five officials, meeting in private, decide which government records the public can see. We obtained their minutes.
Data & investigations editor
14 min read
Records awaiting classification in a government archive.
The committee meets once a month in a room without windows. It has no website, publishes no reports and is mentioned in only one paragraph of the law that created it.
Yet its decisions determine which government documents journalists, researchers and citizens can request, and which remain closed for thirty years.
What the minutes show
Over three years, the committee reclassified more than 4,000 documents as internal working papers, placing them outside freedom-of-information rules. In most cases, the minutes record no discussion.
“Nobody decided to hide anything. It is just easier to say no,” a former member said.
The response
After we shared our findings, two parliamentary groups called for the committee’s meetings to be recorded and its decisions published. The ministry responsible said it would review the process.
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Mateo Ruiz
Data & investigations editor
Mateo leads Pressio’s data team and the investigations that come out of spreadsheets.
