The issue of culture is very important, and I believe we have a strong culture when it comes to openness and disclosure of public documents. There are several reasons for that. First, we have a long tradition of access to public documents dating from 1766, and the law has not been changed.
The way it works in practice is that we are trained on this issue in our education in schools, and when we enter into a public function we are trained in it—it's one of the key issues. The responsibility is not, in the first instance, with the head of a department or management; it's with the public official himself or herself. If I, as a public official at any level in our administration, receive a request, the general direction is to leave everything else aside and deal with that request and hand out the document the same day. The recommendation from our ombudsman, which sets the general practice rules for this, says a maximum of two or three days; it's not a complicated matter.
It could be a document of several hundred pages, etc. What we do then, sometimes, is hand out documents consecutively. If there is a document of 500 pages, we can deliver 100 pages one day and another 100 the next day, in order for them to read it to see whether there are any secrets in it. There is also prestige for the ministers in not being criticized for having a ministry that has long delays in handing out documents.
We don't have a fixed time, but we have these very strict rules, which are followed internally both individually and by the government, and eventually by courts and the ombudsman.
I understand the questions about our appeal system, but there are relatively few appeals on this issue. There are appeals, and they are complicated, but it's more a question of how we manage it on a daily basis.