FOI Update: The FOI Advocates Network has announced plans to create The Right to Information World Advocacy Update. Funded by the Open Society Foundation, “the idea of the document is to help us all understand the successes and challenges for advocates in each region and learn from good case studies as well as get more in contact with regions of the world which are under-represented.” The update will be written by members, and FOIAnet has available €500 for one group from each of seven regions to undertake the research and writing of their section. Applications are due by Dec. 8 and the FOIAnet steering committee will make selections by Dec. 13. FOIAnet has terms of reference for the project and guiding questions.
Indonesia: Documentary video on right to information in Indonesia, done by the Tifa Foundation (with English subtitles).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDCPvUoNpqk (Part I)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1WB-1uWaOI (Part II)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37pUqwGT2lU (part III)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0KBXk-I18k (Part IV)
Bollywood: Indian filmmaker Mani Shankar, known for the films like Knock-Out, 16 December and Mukhbiir, is planning a film on the Right to Information Act “said to be one of the biggest political thrillers attempted in India,” according to a report by Indiantelevision.com. “The filmmaker who claims to have deep contacts in the bureaucracy has apparently chanced upon shocking and unbelievable details on the RTI issue that involves the entire government machinery,” according to the report, which goes on to quote Shankar and discuss the possible involvement of Julian Assange and what actors might be recruited.
Help Wanted: The job of director at the Transparency and Accountability Initiative becomes available as Martin Tisne announces his plan to become Policy Director at Omidyar Network by the end of March 2012. For more information.
Science and FOI: Index on Censorship magazine, Dark Matter, calls for a debate into science and transparency. The science issue will be debated by Sir Mark Walport, the Director of the Wellcome Trust, author and journalist George Monbiot, Professor David Colquhoun and the philosopher Baroness Onora O’Neill. “The Data Debate: is transparency bad for science?” will be held on 6:30 p.m. Dec. 6 at Imperial College London.
United Kingdom: JISC infoNet says it would like to fund up to 6 institutions £3,000 each to track and chart the “journey” of 3 randomly selected FOI requests as part of an effort to document the costs of FOI.
United States: The FOIA Ombudsman unveils a new website.
Transparency International: “Corruption continues to plague too many countries around the world,” according to Transparency International’s 2011 Corruption Perceptions Index.
United States: Associated Press writes about the growing use of apps with local data and efforts to adopt common data standards. “Across the country, geeks are using mountains of data that city officials are dumping on the Web to create everything from smartphone tree identifiers and street sweeper alarms to neighborhood crime notifiers and apps that sound the alarm when customers enter a restaurant that got low marks on a recent inspection. The emergence of city apps comes as a result of the rise of the open data movement in U.S. cities, or what advocates like to call Government 2.0.”
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