The law for the regulation of the entrance to information of the federation or information liberty law (IFG) is a German information liberty law.

Generally

The law grants a conditionless legal claim on entrance to official information from federal authorities to each person. Reason by interest of legal, economic or other kind is not necessary.

"Official information "is each official purposes serving recording, independently of the kind of their storage, thus for example documents in conventional documents, electronically stored information, designs, diagrams, plans, clay/tone and Videoaufzeichnungen.

The requirement is directed against federal authorities in the sense of the administrative proceedings law. If a federal authority avails itself of its tasks of a legal or natural person of private law for fulfilment, then it is obliged to give information also if the desired information is present with the person under private law.

Procedure

The authority grants the information entrance in principle only on request, "immediately "by giving information, grant of file inspection or "in other way ", e.g. by hearing letting of a sound recording or a search in a data base. The authority can raise fees and displays. The refusal of the request is a act of administration, which can be contested with contradiction and obligation complaint.

Exceptions

The law contains numerous exception facts, by which the right can be limited to information entrance or refused completely. So in entrance to personal data may be granted only then, as far as the interest of information of the applicant outweighs the interest worthy of protection of the concerning or the concerning consented.

Concerning contents of personnel documents and personnel management systems no requirement for information entrance exists. Information about names and official addresses of persons employed are to be made however in principle accessible. The same applies to information to consultants and experts.

Entrance to operating and professional secrets is granted only with agreement of the enterprise.

No information right of access exists, if thereby mental property comes into danger. A request for hiring of the source code of EDP programmes could be rejected therefore.

Paradigm change

Despite this extensive catalog of exception facts the principle applies since 1 January 2006 that the grant from entrance to official information is the rule and the refusal of the entrance the exception. This is a paradigm change, applied nevertheless so far the principle that official information is in principle not public, it is, it exists a speciallegally standardized requirement for information.

This break with the official secret leads to the fact that information request of third persons, who are not involved in administrative proceedings in the future simply overall it cannot be rejected. Instead in principle entrance to the desired information must be granted, it is, in individual cases opposes protect-worth and interests with high order third the information entrance. The authority must examine and state this individual case-referred.

Publication obligations

Independently of concrete requests for information entrance the federal authorities must in the future certain information of general kind "officially "publicly admit to make. It concerns around listings, from which the existing information collections and information purpose show themselves, over organization charts and reference number systems. These information is to be published in the Internet.

Federal Commissioner for the uninformativeness

Everyone can call the Federal Commissioners for the uninformativeness, if it regards be quite on information entrance after this law as hurt. The task of the information-liberty-assigned is noticed of Federal Commissioner for the data security. The powers Federal Commissioners for the uninformativeness correspond to those Federal Commissioners for the data security after the Federal Law for Data Protection.

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