Abstract

A set of different galaxies develop around the problem of administrative information: transparency, publicity, right of access, communication and, in part, procedural participation all respond to a demand for knowledge and tend to overlap and to assume vague and uncertain contours. This explains the appropriateness of deepening reflection on the theme, adopting a perspective that makes it possible to clarify the confines and significance of transparency as a rule imposed by the system on administrative action. The analysis tends to distinguish two levels. First of all, it is necessary to verify the existence of a general principle of transparency/ publicity, understood as exposure to the public of administrative information. The spheres removed from the system of publicity are identified in a residual way, and only in this ambit is the right of access placed: where records are reserved to the administration the possibility of verifying the existence of a subjective situation compelling enough to be derogated from the system of secrecy is residual.