The Reasons in Disclosing The Official Information Based on The Decisions of The Official Information Committee: The Case Study of The Disclosure of Information for Competitive Examination, Qualifying Examination or The Competitive Academic Presentation

Abstract

According to the Constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand in 1997, the Thai constitution has clearly prescribed “the right to know” for Thai citizens, especially the right to know the information from the government based on The Official Information Act B.E. 2540— regardless of whether they are stakeholders or not. In addition, the government agencies also have the power to decide not to disclose the official information as stated by law. However, the decision from the government agencies is not final, people who are disagree have the option to appeal the non-disclosure decision of government agencies to the Official Information Commission (OIC) where the OIC’s decision is bound to government agencies to follow. The objective of this study is to investigate the decisions of OIC that are relating to the requests of disclosing the information for the competitive examinations, qualifying examinations or competitive academic presentations as well as the analysis of its antecedences. The study relies on the OIC’s decisions since 2008 including the total of 51 cases.

The study found that the OIC’s decisions consisted of 24 cases of complete disclosure, 19 cases of partial disclosure, and 8 cases of non-disclosure. According to the analyses, the study indicates the reasons for the cases that OIC decided to completely disclose all information to appellant which are: the information regarding official actions, personal information needed to support the consideration of rights of appellants, information relating to the transparency of the official administration or the information that directly affects the rights of appellants. Moreover, the reason for the cases that OIC decided to partially disclose the information is that the information may affect the rights of appellants as well as others. For the cases that OIC decided to lift the appeal or not to disclose the information are the incomplete information, the information that requires consensus from many parties and the information may appear in somewhere else, and the information regarding the examinations that used examination storage system. The study also found that the decision of OIC is likely to be based on the importance of primary proportion.