Grant Competition: The 40 finalists are announced in the Knight Foundation competition for projects to accelerate media innovation with “breakthrough ideas in news and information.” The competition now enters a further evaluation phase, where public input is welcome, with winners to be announced June 23.
The finalists include:
– ¿InfAction! is intended as a web/mobile platform where Right to Information activists can publish their first findings– such as datasets of public information or facts and figures that are of public interest – and pitch them for joint action with other users of the site.
– This proposal is for a joint pilot program between the Web Foundation and OpenCorporates to provide both tools and skills to increase public understanding and use of corporate data in the service of healthy and transparent democracies.
– In this project, our goal is to create public insight from information the government already has. We can take that raw data—quarterly filings by thousands of banks—and make it available for exploration on the Web.
Commentary: Who’s tracking the trackers? A blog post by Luke Fretwell, founder of GovFresh, begins, “Despite open government calls for performance metrics and financial transparency in government, you’d be hard-pressed to find any of this for the movement behind it. He continues:
Over the past four years I’ve followed the contests, challenges, apps, projects, hackathons and people, and there’s been tens of millions granted to organizations and individuals with little structured insight into the movement’s inner workings or even its return on investment.
There’s no visualization or centralized, accessible open data platform that highlights how much is granted to whom, and how these individuals are affiliated with one another.
New Group: The Southeast Asia Technology and Transparency Initiative (SEATTI) was established “to support civil society organizations that use or intend to use technology and media platforms to empower citizens in their respective countries to hold their public institutions transparent and accountable.”
United States: The Administrative Conference of the United States, an independent government body that studies and makes recommendations on government processes, is inviting proposals from persons interested in serving as the Conference’s research consultant for a new project that would help identify the areas in which alternative dispute resolution (ADR) techniques could be applied most effectively to forestall federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation. The objective of the study is to ascertain the principal reasons for FOIA litigation in the federal courts, with an eye to identifying those areas where the ADR capabilities and resources of the National Archives’ Office of Government Information Services and other agencies could be directed most effectively. View the RFP. Contact Deputy General Counsel David Pritzker 202-480-2093 (o) dpritzker@acus.gov
OGP: OGP is looking for “a dynamic, self-motivated individual with strong experience in communications and public affairs to serve as Communications Manager for the OGP Support Unit.” To apply please email an updated CV, cover letter and recent writing sample toinfo@opengovpartnership.org.
Open Data: The Association of Health Care Journalists in the United States, along with six other journalism and open-government groups, calls on the U.S. Department of Agriculture to release to the public vital information about the multibillion-dollar food stamps program.
United States: Long article on the Obama transparency record by Mark Lisheron, a reporter with the Texas bureau of Watchdog.org, which is affiliated with the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity.
Filed under: What's New