Pakistan: A research report, “The State of Proactive Disclosure of Information in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab Public Bodies” says that public bodies in both provinces “are not complying with the respective right to information laws of their provinces.”
United States: The FOIA Advisory Committee holds its first meeting, as summarized in a blog post by the FOIA ombudsman’s office.
United States: The US House drops a requirement that privately sponsored travel be included on lawmakers’ annual financial-disclosure forms, according to the National Journal.
Australia: Five years of a RTI law in Queensland are reviewed in a statement by the information commissioner.
India: An open letter by RTI activist Sridhar Rao urging creation of a single portal for making requests.
United States: Weaknesses in the government’s record-keeping standards are highlighted in a column in the Washington Post by Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, and Anne Weisman the group’s chief counsel. An excerpt:
Quite simply, from a recordkeeping perspective, federal agencies have no idea how to manage their e-mail. Agency employees do not understand that many of their e-mail messages qualify as records that must be preserved for archival purposes, a requirement imposed by the Federal Records Act. And agencies are unwilling to invest in the electronic recordkeeping infrastructure that would ensure e-mail is properly managed and preserved. As a result, many, including the IRS, have a “print to paper” policy, meaning e-mail is preserved only if individual agency employees go to the time and trouble of printing them out and placing them in the appropriate paper files. When that doesn’t happen — as is frequently the case — e-mail may be lost forever as backup tapes routinely are overwritten and older messages often are automatically deleted to save space.
United States: The Office of the Director of National Intelligence a Transparency Report about certain sensitive surveillance programs, as described in a Washington Post article and an OpentheGovernment summary.
Quote of the Week: Nobel laureate Amartya Sen quoted by the Hindustan Times as saying on June 30: “India has a more extensive right to information than any other country in the world. Corruption was easier to bring to public notice once the RTI act came into effect. That’s not just a negative story, it’s a positive story.”
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