Activists have marked the 30th birthday of Australia's freedom of information laws by creating a simpler way to access government documents.
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The Right to Know website, which will go live on Wednesday, helps people make an FOI request from up to 361 Commonwealth agencies and authorities.
The site, developed by the Open Australia Foundation, aims to make the process easy for people who lack training in information law.
One of the foundation's volunteers and directors, Henare Degan, said the formal, legalistic approach of some government agencies put people off.
"We're really keen for everyday Australians to use FOI law: ordinary people who may not even know they have this right to make a request for information," he said.
"We want it to be an everyday thing to do."
In its test phase, the website was used to ask for documents relating to a range of issues, such as stateless asylum seekers, the government’s plan to record citizens’ uses of the internet, and uranium sales to India.
Federal ministers and agencies received 24,764 FOI requests in 2011-12, of which about four in five involved people seeking information about themselves.
However, Mr Degan said about 90 per cent of the other requests were made by journalists or people with deep experience in FOI.
He said Britain, which has had FOI law for just over a decade, had a far more open approach than Australia.
"It's a different culture there: people feel freer to ask for information. There are six times more requests per head of population in Britain than there are in Australia."
The website will also publish the document trail for each FOI request made through it, so the public can see the delays and "the shenanigans that agencies get up to", Mr Degan said.
"Over time, we'll build up a picture that shows just how well FOI is, or isn't, working in this country."
The federal Information Commissioner, Professor John McMillan, hosted a celebration in Canberra on Tuesday to mark three decades of FOI law.
He said FOI ''allows the public to play a stronger role in discussing, reviewing and scrutinising government actions''. "I strongly believe that transparent government is better government."
Australia was one of the first countries to enact an FOI Act, though Sweden's Freedom of the Press Act is almost 2½ centuries old.
CLARIFICATION:
An earlier version of this article said one of the website's "objectives will be to 'shame' public servants who are overly obstructive". This was the result of a misunderstanding; it was the reporter's comment, not Mr Degan's. The Open Australia Foundation has no intention of shaming government staff.
