South Africa: See the report on the R2K 2015 National Summits online here.
OGP: The Open Government Partnership issues its annual report.
United States: See a comprehensive list of the events for the upcoming Sunshine Week.
Debating Transparency: “Disclosure Can Produce Meaningful Change,” writes Chris Gates, the president of Sunlight Foundation is a US nonpartisan nonprofit that advocates for open government globally and uses technology to make government more accountable to all. Gates was responding to a column, “In an Era of Disclosure, an Excess of Sunshine but a Paucity of Rules,” by Jeffrey Eisinger. Eisinger is a reporter for ProPublica, “an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.” He defended the thesis, “Paradoxically, disclosure can be useless — and sometimes actually harmful or counterproductive.”
India: A profile of RTI activist Rakesh Reddy Dubbudu, The former Oracle professional is now the convenor of the Hyderabad-based United Forum for RTI Campaign and the founder of ‘Factly’, a data website largely popular on Facebook.
Canada: A new website by the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression is “a complete collection of all documents that former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked in June 2013. “The Archive also contains some documents that the U.S. Government has published which are helpful in understanding the leaked documents. The Archive does not contain any documents that have not already been published in other sources. The approximately 400 documents currently in the Archive are a small fraction of the estimated 50,000 documents Snowden turned over. Most of these will likely not be published, but as new documents are published, they will be added to the Archive.”
Transparency International Survey: TI is developing a new strategy for the next five years and seek your views. Click here for the survey in English, Spanish, French, or Arabic.
OGP: “Perspectives on Open Government in Latin America,” by Fabrizio Scrollini and Ursula Durand Ochoa
United States: The FOIA Advisory Committee, established by the second Open Government National Action Plan and tasked to “advise on improvements to FOIA administration,” held its third meeting on January 27th (video streaming is available here and here), according to a summary of the meeting on the Unredacted blog.
European Union: The EU Court in Luxemburg ruled in favor of Pirate Party politician Patrick Breyer and invalidated the EU Commission’s decision to refuse access to written pleadings in court (T-188/12). The EUCommission is generally obliged to disclose pleadings in completed court proceedings to the public, says the decision.
Open Budgets: A new research project to map the impact of open budget data was announced by Open Knowledge and the Digital Methods Initiative at the University of Amsterdam, supported by the Global Initiative for Financial Transparency (GIFT). The project will include an empirical mapping of who is active around open budget data around the world, and what the main issues, opportunities and challenges are according to different actors.
Transparency: The Public Innovation Network (XIP), a network of public servants who work for the government of Catalonia, is crowdfunding to translate into English its eBook called “42 Voices About Open Government” now available in Spanish.
United States: The Office of Information Policy has developed new FOIA resources designed to train all levels of the federal workforce to understand their FOIA responsibilities. These new resources were developed as part of our commitments in the U.S. Second Open Government National Action Plan, as well as the Department’s Open Government Plan 3.0.
United States: The results of an extensive new effort by the FOIA Project to annotate Freedom of Information Act lawsuits are beginning to show up on FOIAproject.org. Harry Hammitt, a widely recognized expert on FOIA and the publisher of Access Reports, has joined the FOIA Project team. He has begun to tag cases by the specific issues involved and to add case and opinion summaries to the Project’s comprehensive collection of every court case in which a federal agency has been sued under FOIA since Oct. 1, 1996.
Open Data: The first working draft of Open Data Standards is published by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), and described by Steven Adler, chief information strategist for IBM.
Extractive Transparency: MSI Integrity released a report on the governance of the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI). The report assesses whether national multi-stakeholder groups—the driving force of EITI—are operated and governed effectively.
Aid Transparency: Status report by Publish What you Fund on the launched the 2014 Aid Transparency Index. Also see report on a consultation event with U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Assistance Resources office, the U.S. Agency for International Aid (USAID) and Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network (MFAN) under the theme of “Do More With Data.”
United States: A Sunlight Foundation published a round-up by Emily Shaw of open records activity in state legislatures.
Book: The conditions that make government accountability possible and meaningful are the subject of the new book Reclaiming Accountability by Heidi Kitrosser (University of Chicago Press, 2015).
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