Abstract

The employee duty of confidentiality has different faces and is particularly complex in the case of public administration employees. This complexity is in the first place due to the diversity of legal regulations determined by the area of activity of a given category of public officials. This, in turn, affects the detailed substantive scope of that duty, its objective scope, types of protected values, protected subjects, responsibility in case of breach of the duty, as well as the technical aspect of fulfilling that duty (how the protected subject is to be determined, rules of disclosing restricted information, rules of supervision and monitoring the duty of confidentiality, or the techniques for processing restricted information which guarantee its protection). The presentation of detailed elements and characteristics of that regulations allows for a reflection that scattered and in many cases similar constructions may be at least partly harmonized – that postulate should be addressed to the legislator. On the other hand, such a comprehensive overview imposes a number of conclusions which may lead to the unification of the understanding of the terms used in various regulations and interpretation of those regulations by the entities which apply this law.