FOI Notes: Australia, Pakistan, UK, US, Open Data

8 July 2014

Australia: The government has made FOI statistics available in a machine-readable format, according to a report in Computer World.

Pakistan:The State of Right to Information in Pakistan” by the Centre for Peace and Development Initiatives (CPDI) recommends steps to implement the new RTI laws in the states of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab. In a nationwide test of transparency, information was provided in case of only 97 information requests out of a total of 1,117. The report recommends that the national Freedom of Information Ordinance 2002 and its replicas in Sindh and Balochistan be repealed and new laws enacted. Also see article in The News.

United Kingdom: FOI requests via Twitter? See Alistair Sloan blog post about the emerging rules in the UK. A post on FOI Kid on the same topic. A further commentary on 20140 Information law Blog. (And a 2012 post on the topic on FOIMan blog.)

United States: The House Ethics Committee reverses itself and reinstates the requirement for members to disclose privately sponsored travel in their annual financial disclosure forms, according to Wall Street Journal blog post and a commentary by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Open Data/United States: “The Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Science and Technology Policy are looking for 100 percent participation from agencies when it comes to supplying data sets for the administration’s Enterprise Data Inventory,” according to a report on Federal News Radio. “Agencies have until the end of November to provide the data, according to the administration’s latest cross-agency priority goals update listed on Performance.gov.

US FOI History: Jelani Cobb in an article in The New Yorker writes about the signing of the FOIA law in 1966 by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Open Data/Australia: The government is preparing an Open Data Toolkit to consolidate policies and guidance for agencies managing and sharing government data, according to an article in Asia Pacific Future Gov and a government blog post.

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