The access to public information and the archives in Uruguay

Abstract

The article analyzes the current situation of the archives in Uruguay in relation to the laws of Access to the Public Information and the National Archives system. This regulation emerge due to that the Uruguayan State initiates a phase of reordering of his management implanting changes that promote the democratization, the efficiency and nullify the opacity and extreme reservation in his management. It is observed as the professionals archivist were narrowly involved in the process of creating both laws, giving beginning to a stage of attainment of strong political wills that were supporting both convinced projects that the evident premise of the Law of Access is that the document to which one tries to accede exists and is recoverable. It is studied as the coexistence of both procedure, they were involving inevitably a cultural change, an evolution in the behavior of the organizations that did not accompany the implementation of the legal instruments. One concludes that the Law of Access to the Public Information, it is based on the fundamental principle of transparency of the Branches of the State, for what it is not of surprising that a law that forces to offer information has the risk of developing into dead letter. The File must be an administrative "condition", which demands a new dimension of them and his Professional inside the Branches of the State, of such form that turn into an unsurpassable tool for the fulfillment of the objectives of the Law of Access to the Public Information.