> Obviously, no one believes for one minute that any 'normal' citizen will be granted access to most things.

In the Netherlands we get reasonably close with what we call WOB requests (literally: Law of Public Governance).

It takes a long time before you get the data (months) and it gets manually redacted but requests like for example:

I would like to receive all internal communication of the ministery of Health with my name in the email body.

Generally, get honored.