Research: More than five dozen papers have just been posted that will be presented at the 1st Global Conference on Transparency Research, to be held May 19-20 at Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey.
Titles include:
- Bertoni, Eduardo: Freedom of Information. Three harmless words? The role of the media and access to information laws
- Fumega, Silvana and Scrollini, Fabrizio: Access to Information and Open Government Data in Latin America
- Idemudia, Uwafiokun:The Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative and Corruption in Nigeria: Rethinking the Links between Transparency and Accountability
- Kim, Soonhee: E-Participation, Transparency, and Trust in Local Government
- Ma, Liang: What Drives Fiscal Transparency? Evidence from Provincial Governments in China
- Pauchard, Nicolas, Holsen, Sarah, and Pasquier, Martial: Resistance to Transparency in Switzerland: a Case Study Analysis of Behaviors and Justifications
- Seidman, Guy: Lawyers are from Mars, Political Scientists are from Venus: Who Gets Transparency Right?
- Tran, Anh, Malesky, Edmund, and Schuler, Paul: The Adverse Effects of Sunshine: Evidence from a Field Experiment on Legislative Transparency in an Authoritarian Assembly
- Xiao, Weibing:.Freedom of Information Reform in China: Information Flow Analysis
Secrecy: Clare Birchall, University of Kent, says, “If you are interested in transparency and secrecy as interdisciplinary, theoretically-informed, cultural notions, do take a look at an interactive compilation of online resources I have begun. http://liquidbooks.pbworks.com/w/page/39188133/Transparency-and-Secrecy
It’s available on a platform called Liquid Books, managed by Gary Hall and Birchall. You are welcome to post links there. To do so, you need to request access (see side bar for details) or see: http://liquidbooks.pbworks.com/w/page/11135953/How-to-Contribute-to-a-Liquid-Book
Bangladesh: Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative and Nagorik Uddyog announce the release of their publication titled “Tottho Odhikar Chorcha – Byaboharik Nirdeshika” (RTI User’s Guide) 2011. This book is designed to understand the salient features of the 2009 RTI Act and to know how to use it to access information. Click here on CHRI’s website to view an electronic version of the book (in PDF format). You could also access it on Nagorik Uddyog’s website: http://www.nuhr.org/.
For a copy of the book, please contact Mr. Amit Ranjan Dey or Mr. Hamidul Islam, Nagorik Uddyog at House # 8/14, Block – B, Lalmatia, Dhaka- 1207, Bangladesh or call at 88-028115868.
Global Integrity Report: “Egypt’s performance on key anti-corruption and transparency measures fell consistently from 2006 through the end of 2010, putting increased pressure on the country’s already fragile governance environment in the run-up to the January 2011 revolution,” according to a new report by Global Integrity, an international nonprofit organization that tracks governance and corruption trends globally. “Similar weaknesses were discovered across a range of other countries in the Middle East and North Africa including Yemen, Morocco, and the West Bank, while Pakistan witnessed its first-ever significant decline in the overall effectiveness of its anti-corruption safeguards.” The report covers 36 countries.
Research: A research paper by Robert Goodspeed – PhD student at M.I.T. Department of Urban Studies and Planning (rgoodspe@mit.edu) – argues “for taking advantage of new technology to move from a “request-response” FOIA mode of transparency to a proactive disclosure, open government, paradigm.
“Under the Massachusetts public records act, computer files are considered public. So I filed a request for GIS data from our 351 municipalities and wrote about some of the ensuing legal and technical issues. Basically, only two towns refused to give me the files, but the biggest legal issue I identified was overly restrictive public data licenses that may prohibit innovative re-uses in apps and for analysis. I also discussed some of the technical issues about how to make data available, and the fact that municipal fragmentation mean the towns have limited capacity.”
The paper is under review by the URISA Journal, here is the draft version:
http://www.urisa.org/files/URISA-Final-RGoodspeed_0.pdf
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