The number of government dossiers on Bavarian citizens has swelled towards Stasi-era proportions, as covered widely in the media.

The problem in Germany is not confined to Bavaria; the Federal Criminal Office’s official statistics for 2003 show an annual increase of government corruption cases across Germany of more than 30% between 2001 and 2002. With freedom of information laws in place in only four of Germany’s 16 states, the major task that lies ahead is to promote and make known these laws, to encourage citizens to apply them, and to bring about freedom of information legislation in all German states and at the federal level. This is an area in which churches of Scientology have taken an active role for more than two decades, starting with an exposé in the early 1980s that the German government had placed its own citizens at risk by permitting hazardous chemical weapons to be stockpiled in rural areas close to a centre of population.

Then, with the initiation of the first freedom of information laws in Germany, a German Scientologist founded Action Transparent Administration (ATV) to encourage use of the new laws and to promote FOI throughout Germany. By mid-2003, ATV had activated more than 300 requests under such legislation to government offices in Berlin, Brandenburg, Schleswig-Holstein and Northrhine-Westphalia.

The Church has also gone to great lengths to ensure that people are aware of these freedom of information laws, and through ATV circulated information describing how to do so. Working with pro-FOI members of parliament, ATV greatly increased public interest in the topic, and was subsequently rewarded when Northrhine-Westphalia enacted a FOI law in 2002, identical in large part to a draft circulated to the legislators by ATV.

At the same time, ATV distributed several thousand information letters and “FOI Usage Manuals” to government officials and members of parliaments. Based upon dozens of responses, many politicians found they could use the manuals in arguing for freedom of information legislation. In Hamburg, a party leader made a decision to demand FOI laws after studying ATV’s materials. In the states of Bavaria and Thuringia, MPs found the information served as a basis for parliamentary discussions, to increase awareness of the need for FOI among other MPs.

As FOI law was new in Germany, many government officials had little understanding of its application. The Church of Scientology, an “old hand” at the use of FOI, has made a profound difference. Indeed, in December 2002, at a hearing in the Berlin Administrative Court, when the presiding judge ordered the state of Berlin to open its files to the Church as the FOI law required, he congratulated the Church on what he called its “pioneer work” in applying the law.

ATV received a similar acknowledgement in December 2003 at a major international FOI conference in Kiel, capital of Schleswig-Holstein. Attendees included representatives of Scandinavian countries, NGOs, German FOI commissioners, MPs and the state Minister of Interior. The government official who had dealt with requests filed by the Church applauded the Church’s work in orienting officials in various ministries to the law and how to use it to establish trust between the government and its citizens. These are exactly the strides forward that will bring true transparency of government to all of Germany.