Information Commissioners: The International Conference of Information Commissioners will take place Sept. 18-20 2013 in Berlin. It will jointly be hosted by the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information and by the Berlin Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information. More information will be made available on the ICIC website.
Open Data: A brief history in Paris Tech Review by Chignard Simon, the author of Open Data, comprendre l’ouverture des données publiques (Open Data: Understanding the opening of public data, Fyp Publishing, April 2012). “An independent consultant and trainer, he accompanies public and private organizations in their data development and dissemination strategies. He runs the website http://www.donneesouvertes.info/. He is president of Bug, a NGO dedicated to social and digital innovation, and vice-president of Rennes’ barcamp La Cantine.
Open Data: Overview of the debate about open data by Alexander B. Howard, Government 2.0 Correspondent for O’Reilly Media.
Open Data: “Why Open Data Isn’t Enough,” an article by David E. Kaplan, stressing the value of reporting. One sentence: “Open data and smart tech apps can certainly help these kinds of investigations, but there is no substitute for the kind of street-level digging, personal interviews, and detective work these projects entailed.”
Requester COnfidentiality: In a paper published in the April edition of Government Information Quarterly, Sarah Lamdan, a City University of New York associate law library professor, argues that the routine online disclosure by agencies of the identities of FOIA requestors has potentially negative effects on the flow of information. FOIA log information “could hint at upcoming news stories, potential lawsuit, and reveal where people work and what they are doing on a given day,” Lamdan says. Appears to cost $41.95.
Mexico: The Access to Information and Transparency Organism that belongs to the Federal Electoral Institute issued a report with a transparency ranking of the Mexican political parties. According to the report, PRI shows the worst performance. In 2012, PRI received 220 citizen claims for not receiving an answer to their information requests (that being 65% of the total claims). Political parties are obliged to provide public information under the Federal Access to Information and Transparency Law.
United States: Cause of Action submitted FOIA requests to 16 different federal departments in April 2012 concerning spending on promotional items between January 2009 and April 2012. They were graded according to response time, use of redactions, and approval of a fee waiver reqeust. “What we found was that, overall, the President and his administration continue to fall short of a culture of transparency in the Federal Government.”Cause of Action “is a nonprofit, nonpartisan government accountability organization that fights to protect economic opportunity when federal regulations, spending, and cronyism threaten it.”
Aid Transparency: A new report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) identifies significant problems with the delivery of U.S. aid in Haiti and finds an overall lack of transparency on how the billions of dollars obligated for U.S. assistance to Haiti are being used. The report, “Breaking Open the Black Box: Increasing Aid Transparency and Accountability in Haiti,” by CEPR Research Associate Jake Johnston and Senior Associate for International Policy Alexander Main, examines the effectiveness of U.S. assistance to Haiti, how it is being administered, to what extent it is adhering to the “USAID Forward” reform agenda and what steps can be taken to ensure its more effective and transparent delivery.
Technology: A new version of Froide, the open-source, Python-based Freedom of Information platform which powers the German and Austrian instances of FragDenStaat, was released in version 3.0 this month.
Corporate Secrecy: The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists issues a report on the names behind covert companies and private trusts in the British Virgin Islands, the Cook Islands and other offshore hideaways. The records detail the offshore holdings of people and companies in more than 170 countries and territories, according to ICIC. The hoard of documents represents the biggest stockpile of inside information about the offshore system ever obtained by a media organization.
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