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While the registers of the European Parliament, Council and Commission may refer to sensitive documents, there are sensitive documents which are not recorded.342 Those documents which are recorded shall be ‘released only with the consent of the originator’.343 According to Mexican law, ‘[t]he administrative units shall create, every six months and for each topic, a list including all the files characterized as privileged [classified] or confidential. Said list shall indicate the administrative unit that generated the information, the date of the classification, the grounds, the reserve period, or, if it is the case, those portions of the documents that are privileged or confidential. This list shall never be deemed as privileged or confidential information’.344 The FOI Act of the United Kingdom does not prescribe the establishment of registers. Rather the Lord Chancellor shall issue and regularly revise a Code of Practice on the Management of Records, which is not binding, but desirable for the public authorities to follow. ‘[I]f they are failing to comply with the Code, they may also be failing to comply with the Public Records Acts 1958 and 1967, the Local Government (Records) Act 1962, the Local Government Act 1972, the Local Government (Access to Information) Act 1985 or other recordkeeping or archives legislation, and they may consequently be in breach of their statutory obligations’.345 In Austria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Poland and Republic of South Africa, there are registers not accesible to the public which may contain the top three levels of classified information or differentiate between levels of protection provided to information of various sensitivities. In Macedonia (FYR), such registers contain all classified information.346
Genuinely, if the freedom of information or the secrecy regime has provisions on denial or confirmation of existence of classified information, i.e. allows ‘neither deny, nor confirm’ responses to access requests, such information which fall into this category are not recorded in the publicly accessible registers. Although the present study does not cover regulations of historical archives, it has to be noted that in several countries archives may also hold classified records, such as in Australia where 'Protectively marked records transferred into the custody of the National Archives of Australia keep the protective markings they had when received from the originating agency and are stored and handled in accordance with those markings. The Archives Act 1983 (the Archives Act), however, provides that where a record is made available for public access in accordance with the Act — in other words, it is in the open after 30 years period — and does not contain continuing exempt information, any protective markings cease to have effect fr any purpose'.347
RECOMMENDATION Publicly accessible registers of information held by public bodies can make the information request considerably simpler. This may alleviate the work of public body holding the information as the information requests may become better formulated.