Budget Transparency: A report (in Spanish) on access to information on expenditures and budget in Latin American legislatures has been published by Red Latinoamericana por la Transparencia Legislativa.
New Book: Wikileaks and the Age of Transparency by Micah L. Sifry. Political analyst and writer Sifry argues that WikiLeaks is not the whole story: it is a symptom, an indicator of an ongoing generational and philosophical struggle between older, closed systems, and the new open culture of the Internet. “What is new,” he writes, “is our ability to connect, individually and together, with greater ease than at any time in human history. As a result, information is flowing more freely into the public arena, powered by seemingly unstoppable networks of people all over the world cooperating to share vital data and prevent its suppression.”
Development: The Associated Press reports that a major global health fund is considering scaling back on its budget transparency.
New Book: The World Bank has issued the third volume of Accountability Through Public Opinion: From Inertia to Public Action. The book is edited by CommGAP’s Program Head Sina Odugbemi and Taeku Lee, Professor of Political Science and Law at the University of California, Berkeley. Authors from development practice and academia discuss in 28 chapters how citizens can hold their governments accountable, and how genuine demand for accountability can be created.
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