Last January, the UK's Freedom of Information Act 2000 went into effect, and public agencies are struggling to meet its requirements. The Society of Information Technology Management has posted a guide for local authorities, saying: "This legislation is a fundamental challenge to the current common premise within public bodies that everything is secret unless stated otherwise. The working premise will now be that everything is public unless specifically exempted."
Specific exemptions are detailed in the UK's Data Protection Act of 1998.