Law 78-753 of July 17, 1978 on the liberty of access to public information in France (for the most part abrogated in 2015) did not require public administrations to publish their numerical data, nor to proactively publish information.
Nonetheless, it implemented a cornerstone for open public data by broadly and precisely defining administrative documents as "whatever their date, their place of conservation, their type or their support, the documents produced or received, within their exerciceexercise of the public tasks, by the State, the [[Territorial collectivity|territorial collectivities]] and the other legal persons under public law or the legal persons under private law tasked with such public tasks. Are constitutive of such documents files, reports, studies, minutes of meetings and proceedings, statistics, directives, instructions, circulars, notes and ministerial responses, correspondancecorrespondence, notices, previsions and decisions."<ref name=":0">{{Citation|title=Loi n° 78-753 du 17 juillet 1978 portant diverses mesures d'amélioration des relations entre l'administration et le public et diverses dispositions d'ordre administratif, social et fiscal - Article 2|url=https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexteArticle.do;jsessionid=A3542A5DEF75BB592F8BED894F32B688.tpdila09v_1?idArticle=LEGIARTI000029726374&cidTexte=LEGITEXT000006068643&dateTexte=20160928|accessdate=2016-09-29}}</ref>
It required administrative documents that were not under elaboration to be communicated to "those who asked for it".<ref name=":0" />
