European Union: Statewatch has released two analyses on secrecy in the EU. “Constructing the secret EU state” discusses “restricted” and “limited” documents hidden from view by the Council. “There were over 117,000 “RESTRICTED” documents produced or handled by the Council since 2001 but only 13,184 are listed in its public register of documents,” according to the report. Tony Bunyan, Statewatch Director, said, “In place of the need to deepen democratic openness and accountability in EU the Council has entrenched a system of secrecy based on its discretion to decide whether and when to make documents public. A second report, “Statewatch, the European Commission and the Dutch Senate,” highlights “the limits that have been put in place to try and restrict the sovereignty of national parliaments’ to decide for themselves what documents can be placed in the public domain in order that the people can understand what is being decided in their name.”
United States: The Federal Interagency Open Government Working Group announced a new Open Government Discussion Group where federal open government and FOIA professionals can collaborate with colleagues in civil society who also care about these issues. This public group is open to anyone and we look forward to engaging in productive dialogues on issues including U.S. Federal open government efforts, the Open Government Partnership, Federal agency Open Government Plans, the Freedom of Information Act, and other related issues. Email Cori Zarek at czarek@ostp.eop.gov or co-moderator Amy Bennett of OpenTheGovernment.org at abennett@openthegovernment.org – or search for the US Open Government discussion group within Google Groups and request to be added there.
Job Opening – Africa: The African Freedom of Information Centre is looking to hire a Legal/ Research Officer. Deadline: April 17, 2014. For more information see website posting.
India: Subhash Chandra Agrawal, who has filed over 500 RTI, expresses concerns that the potential of the legislation has not been realized in an article in The Economic Times.
OGP: “How an Open Private Sector can contribute to the OGP – and how open data helps its bottom line,” a blog post by Benjamin Herzberg, who lead the work on the Open Private Sector platform at the World Bank.
Open Data: The World Bank is developing a fund to provide financing that can help catalyze the growth of data fueled businesses in emerging economies, according to a blog post.
Open Data: While the “best” municipality using open data is still yet to be known, a new census has identified 36 cities making progress opening their data. The census, officially named the U.S. Open Data Census, has scored 36 cities based on the type and quality of their open data efforts. San Francisco was listed with the highest score, and was followed by Sacramento, Calif., in second place and Salt Lake City in third. The project — a collaboration among the Open Knowledge Foundation, the Sunlight Foundation and Code for America — reviewed cities based on 17 categories of data sets that included information on crime, transit operations, construction permits, emergency management, GIS zoning and more. Governing
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