Scotland: Reforms are necessary to counter the erosion the law, according to an anniversary report by Scottish Information Commissioner Rosemary Agnew.
India: “What has ten years of RTI achieved?” asks the headline to an article in The Tribune by Pamerla Philipose.
Open Government Partnership: “What to watch for in 2015,” an outlook article by the OGP staff.
Implementation: A World Bank webinar on Feb. 5 will feature Toby Mendel, director of the Centre for Law and Democracy discussing the link between good RTI laws and effective implementation.
Italy: Ernest Belisario writes that Italy needs a FOI law (in Italian).
Cayman Islands: “Meeting minutes from Cayman government’s various boards and commissions can be hard to come by. Few boards publish their minutes online, most require people to file Freedom of Information requests to read about what happened in a meeting of a public body and those requests can take a month or more to produce any documents,” reports Charles Duncan of The Cayman Compass.
Development: Transparency International and about 70 other organizations issue a statement saying that “transparent, accountable and inclusive institutions are vital if we are to end poverty and protect the planet.” The letter advocates for inclusion of a governance provision in the Post-2015 Development Framework now being written. For news on the UN deliberations see article by Bill Orme for the blog of the Center for International Media Assistance.
Russia: The Infometer project audits websites of 78 Russian federal executive government bodies for informational openness.
Russia: The Ministry of Finance together with NGO Infoculture launched an apps developers’ challenge BudgetApps based on the open data, which have been published by the Ministry of Finance over the past several years. More in a blog post by Ivan Begtin, director at NGO “Informational Culture” and founder of the OpenGovData.ru project.
United Kingdom: An article describing a talk by the director of Campaign for Freedom of Information Maurice Frankel in which he warned that the FOI Act remains under constant attack from government.
United Kingdom: Reflections on the 10th anniversary of the UK FOI law by Tom Felle, Acting Director, Interactive and Newspaper Journalism at City University London.
United States: The Justice Department issues guidance on the handling of requests for expedited processing.
United States: Changes to the FOIA law in Michigan meant that government agencies will not be allowed to charge more than 10 cents per page for copies of public records; they can face increased fines for delaying responses, and people seeking the records now can sue if they consider the fees to be exorbitant, The Detroit Free Press summarizes.
Indonesia: A constitutional court is considering an appeal lodged by the Central Information Commission concerning its independence. A brief filed by the Centre for Law and Democracy sides with the commission and discusses international practice.
India: An interview with Satbir Singh, who in 2014 started the Justice Project, which works to document the deaths and disappearances of journalists and right to information activists in India.
FOI Resources: The Global Journalism Network has updated its FOI Resources page and created a FOI Pinterest board (26 pins, 185 followers). The website also includes an article recapping a report by MySociety on digital tools.
Employment: The OGP is looking for a person with “plenty of open government/civil society experience in Asia” to join the OGP Support Unit to coordinate civil society activities. Also see the OGP employment page for details about other open positions to review of national action plans for Argentina and Moldova. The OGP also is continuing its hunt for a communications director.
Budget Transparency: The International Budget Partnership analyzes the US State Department report on the fiscal transparency of countries eligible for aid.
Open Budgets: The Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency writes about its plans for 2015. The report finds that, of the 140 countries assessed, 90 meet the minimum requirements of fiscal transparency; 11 countries have “made significant progress” in improving fiscal transparency; and 39 have “not made significant progress.”
Corporate Transparency: A new report on the value of beneficial ownership transparency by the B Team Beneficial Ownership Working Group.
Open Data: Should Uber data be public” — a blog Emily Badger in the Washington Post Wonkblog.
Open Data: The developers of the Open Data Handbook have announced plans to revise it and are aiming to include a new chapter, on open data and privacy. They are seeking stories via this form.
Open Data: TED talk by Ben Wellington of I Quant NY with the message that “open data is still too closed.” (Also mentions use of FOI to get data.)
Commentary: Not entirely on point – more about corporate culture. An article in the Huffington Post by Terri Wallin of Wallin Enterprises lists seven things leaders can do to create a transparent organizational culture.
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