OGP: The OGP Steering Committee voted to expand the International Experts’ Panel that oversees the Independent Reporting Mechanism tasked with reviewing each of the OGP country action plans and OGP processes. “We currently have opened the call for more IEP nominations to expand the existing membership. This is your chance to make sure that the IRM continues to be led by accomplished, deliberate, and brilliant minds. This will help to continue to build OGP’s credibility and learning.” More information and the advertisement can be found here: http://www.opengovpartnership.org/node/5623 Nominations are due Dec. 19.
Open Education: The Open Knowledge Foundation launches an effort on open education data.
Proactive Transparency/US: An article by Alexa Capeloto, journalism professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice/City University of New York, highlights a trend toward public agencies proactively providing information before anyone has to ask for it. “Even though the movement is in its early stages, agencies in more than a third of U.S. states are `beginning to make headway’ in adopting open-data portals, according to a recent survey of state chief information officers.
Publication: Thomson-Reuters Aranzadi has published a book (in Spanish) by Miguel Angel Blanes Climent, “Information transparency of public administrations. The right of the people to know and the duty to disseminate public information actively.”
Report: “Bridging and Bonding: Improving the links between Transparency and Accountability actors,” documents the first Learning and Inspiration Event hosted by Making All Voices Count at which people with different kinds of expertise came together to think collaboratively about how technology can be used to enhance citizen engagement and improve government responsiveness.
World Bank: Nongovernment organizations write the World Bank asking that the Bank include in its Systematic Country Diagnostic an assessment of the environment for civic engagement in the countries for which a Country Partnership Framework is being developed to govern the Bank’s operations in the country.
Government Advertising: Governments spend advertising money in almost half of the 56 countries surveyed in the Mapping Digital Media research coordinated by the Open Society Program on Independent Journalism, as discussed in an Open Society Foundations blog post.
Open Data: A liveblog by Erhardt Graeff on a talk by social researcher Tim Davies on open data. “He puts forward three null hypotheses:?H1: Open data is not delivering widespread inclusive civic engagement;?H2: Open data is not delivering scalable innovation;?H3: Open data is not substantially shifting the balance of power between citizen and state.”
Open Data: The US Sunlight Foundation develops a map of where open data policies exist.
Open Data: The opendatamonitor.eu project is running a seven-minute survey on open data, usage and obstacles.
Open Data: The OGP Open Data Working Group announces the five winning proposals for up to $20,000 in funding to explore ”the technical and practical implications of open data.”
– Open North Inc. (Canada): “Recommended standards and best practices for open data”
– Mitrovic Development & Research Institute (South Africa): “Building open data capacity through e-skills acquisition
– Step Up Consulting (The Philippines): “Enhancing citizen engagement with open government data”
– Mark Frank (United Kingdom): “User centred methods for measuring the value of open data”
– Sunlight Foundation (United States): “The social impact of open data in the global south”
Corruption: Transparency International’s latest corruption perceptions index.
United States: continues to add cases filed in its database: 36 documents from 22 FOIA cases filed between Nov. 16 and Nov. 29.
United States: A television report on the handling of driving violations by diplomats in Washington, based on FOI requests.
United States: The Data Transparency Coalition files comments on the establishment of financial data standards.
United States: A Hearsay Culture interview with Prof. Fred Schauer of U. Va. regarding the right to know.
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