Access to administrative documents and to public sector information in Italy

Law No. 241 of 1990 on administrative procedure (Italian APA) established general rules on the right of access to administrative documents for the first time in the Italian legal system, which partly reproduced rules defined in sectorial legislations. From such very restrictive regime of access to administrative documents—lately accompanied by a rather demagogical obligation imposed on public administrations to disclose a set of information in the context of the so-called open data policies—Italy has recently moved forth to public access to data and documents held by public administrations.