THE REGULATION ON MINISTERIAL ADVICE AND ASSISTANCE – ONE YEAR ON DO THE MINISTRIES GIVE INCREASED ACCESS TO FILES? For obvious reasons, the complaints which have been presented to the Ombudsman institution only give a limited picture of how the central administration has used the controversial regulation on ministerial advice and assistance in the regulation’s first year of life. In order to get a better overview, the Ombudsman decided in October 2014 to obtain information from all ministries about the number of decisions in which the departments had used the regulation. The information was to cover all of 2014, and the Ombudsman asked that he get the information no later than 1 February 2015. The ministries were also asked to state how many times the departments had decided to give access after all in accordance with the principle of increased access. And the question of increased access is exactly what is important in this connection. The regulation on ministerial advice and assistance has been introduced in order to protect the regard for the internal and political decision-making process. However, the regulation protects ‘ministerial advice and assistance documents’ no matter what other information may be included in the documents and thereby no matter whether there is an actual need for confidentiality in the individual case. Therefore, one could argue that it is the principle of increased access – which section 14 of the new Access to Public Administration Files Act emphasises – that is going to ensure a reasonable result. If there are no weighty regards for the internal political decision-making process, it is therefore obvious to say that the document/information should be provided as part of the increased access principle. Or in other words: The regulation on ministerial advice and assistance is only to be used when it is necessary. To begin with, the numbers from the ministries are obtained in order to assess whether there is an issue to address. It is expected that the overall results of the Ombudsman’s deliberations will be published during 2015. 45