Revista Catalana de Dret Públic (Dec 2007)
Sobre el dret administratiu de la informació
Abstract
Administrative law in the 21st century, in contrast to the administrative law of the 19th and the 20th centuries, will be information-oriented. Information and communication with society have always been important for the central government and administrative agencies, but today they are taking on a new profile and a new meaning. Only the future will reveal what their content will be and how they should be built. Here two major hypotheses are put forward: a) Information and communication are not just one more specific sector, but the backbone cutting across the entire body, fermenting and impregnating the whole. It is no longer a question of information and communication finding a niche in the whole; they are the whole. All the classical institutions of administrative law must be understood and rediscovered in their communicative dimension. b) The phenomenon of contemporary information and communication, backed by the new technologies, cannot be viewed in isolation, but rather, in its current state, i.e., as a phenomenon that goes along with the movements and revolutions to which it is profoundly linked: globalization of the economy; deregulation, liberalization and privatization; public-private collaboration and other regulatory models, etc. The administrative law of the future will have to familiarize itself with new techniques, instruments and institutions. And, above all, with a new system of relationships among its constituent parts. In this sense, information-oriented administrative law represents the spearhead of the reform and modernization of the scientific system of Administrative Law.
