Data publishers must consider the classification requirements of government records in order to determine the public sector data that can be legally released.
The Law on the Classification of State Records and the Governance of Protected Places governs the classification of government information. This law sets out four classification categories for public documents: top secret, secret, restricted, and confidential. Broadly speaking, the different classifications are aimed at protecting national security and public interest and are not aimed at classifying all workings of the government.
This law does not expressly recognise “open” or “public” as a category under which government information may be classified. Equally, the law does not prohibit an unclassified document from being made public. Therefore, government employees play an important role in identifying the amount of government data capable of being made open or public by avoiding overclassification.