Whistle-Blowing: A post on the Open Society Foundations website says the 35 year sentence for Bradley Manning is out of step with the punishment he would have received in other democracies, and certainly not in line with international law, including as the Tshwane Principles.
IFTI Watch: The World Bank has released a new report — World BankCivil Society Engagement Review of Fiscal Years 201012 – “that documents important advances in its relations with civil society over the past three years.”
United Kingdom: A Request Initiative blog about an initiative provides advice for NGOs and charities who want to use the Freedom of Information Act. See introductory post.
United Kingdom: “Transparency advocates may find it bizarre that a report on open government fails to discuss the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The omission of FOIA is no accident, writes Lucas Amin, who suggests the government may try to hamstring the act while championing an alternative transparency agenda.” See Request Initiative post.
United States: The Agency for International Development (USAID) issues a consolidated democracy, human rights and governance strategy The strategy report (PDF, 6.83MB) is available on USAID’s website. A general
Data Journalism: The Data Journalism Handbook, “a free, openly licensed reference book showing journalists how to use data to improve the news,” published by the Open Knowledge Foundation worked with the European Journalism Centre is now available in a new French language edition, and in Russian and Spanish, according to an OKF blog post.
United States: A large assortment of FOI-related resources collected by the Society of Professional Journalists.
United Kingdom: In-depth article in The Independent by Robert Verkaik on the government’s plans to exempt the royal family from the FOIA.
United States: “Over 250 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) case workers and their managers representing more than 70 federal departments and agencies attended the 2013 FOIAXpress Users Group Conference on August 22 in downtown D.C., “ according to a summary by the host, AINS Inc., “the creator of the leading FOIA technology in North America.” Also see coverage by Federal News Radio.
Grants: The Sunlight Foundation announces its first group of OpenGov Grants awards, most dealing with data analysis.
Open Data: A Tech President article entitled “How Governments Should Release Open Data,” by Jessica McKenzie begins, “When releasing data, governments should know that format matters almost as much as content. If it is clean, well organized, complete and in a machine-readable format, even a nonprogrammer can make good use of it.”
India: Chief Information Commissioner Satyananda Mishra chatted live with NDTV and answered questions on the RTI Act and other issues.
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