FOI Advocacy: Rappler in the Philippines published an example-filled article, ‘How access to information laws can help you.” Rappler is “a social news network where stories inspire community engagement and digitally fuelled actions for social change.” Rappler comes from the root words “rap” (to discuss) + “ripple” (to make waves). Separately, the FOI Youth Initiative in the Philippines created an infographic on the FOI bill.
Open Contracting: The Open Contracting Partnership has announced Version 1.0 of the Open Contracting Data Standard.
Russia: The Infometer project has completed a large public audit of openness of information on Russian general jurisdiction courts’ activities. The experts were auditing compliance of various level courts’ official websites with the federal FOI Law, focusing on online publication of templates for documents used for filing applications to courts. The experts evaluated online presence or absence of various information categories such as: information on procedure for access to case materials, procedure of duty payment, rules for visitors, and so on. However, the results show insufficient level of judicial system’s proactive openness.
The UN Post-2015 Development Agenda: Bill Orme, the Global Forum for Media Development’ UN representative, recaps the UN discussion thus far on including freedom of information as one target in the agenda. He says three core categories of available indicators could be used to monitor progress towards freedom of information in the context of the goals: 1) Access to information: Constitutional and/or statutory guarantees of public access to public-sector information 2) Affordable, effective Internet access: moving to universality 3) Press freedom and protection of journalists.
Separately, African media organizations have added their voice to the call for access to information and other governance reforms to be included in the Post-2015 Development Agenda being drafted by the United Nations, issuing the “Nairobi Declaration.”
Employment: Article 19 is looking to hire an experienced legal officer in London. Deadline this week.
Commentary: A column on the limits of transparency – “Openness and transparency will not solve our problems” — by Jeffrey Pfeffer, Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, largely in the US context, in Fortune Magazine.
Whistleblowers: A report from Blueprint for Free Speech says:
The G20 countries committed in 2010 and 2012 to put in place adequate measures to protect whistleblowers, and to provide them with safe, reliable avenues to report fraud, corruption and other wrongdoing. While much has been achieved as a result of the G20 commitment, on the whole much remains to be done to meet this important goal. Many G20 countries’ whistleblower protection laws continue to fail to meet international standards, and fall significantly short of best practice.
Open Data: Commentary on open data’s future by Mark Headd, head of Philadelphia’s effort, including his statement, “I believe that nothing has the potential to drive more innovation inside of government than open data programs originally designed to share data with consumers outside of government.”
Open Data: A Sunlight Foundation audit of the US agencies’ open data catalogs finds that they “varied widely in quantity and quality of data.”
United States: The US ombudsman issues its first report on an agency’s FOIA work, focusing on the National Archives and Records Administration.
United States: A Schenectady newspaper editorial commemorating the 40th anniversary of the New York state FOI law.
United States: Sunlight has started a regular digest of US open government news and information to be called “Today in OpenGov.” (Click here to subscribe http://ift.tt/1CQ0R6Y.)
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