ICIC: The Ninth International Conference of Information Commissioners will be held April 22 and 23 in Santiago, Chile, The limited posted program is a mix of speeches and panels. It does not appear that the sessions will be webcast. The attending commissioners will meet privately and are expected to issue a statement.
South Africa: Gabriella Razzano of the Open Democracy Advice Centre writes about the provision in the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) that permits public bodies to refuse a request for information if they believe it to be “manifestly frivolous or vexatious.” Razzano comments, “In using this ground for refusal, I believe a public body often reveals its own gross failings, rather than those of the requester – and we have just been exposed to such a case in point by the City of Cape Town.”
India: “If we hobble Right to Information, then we hobble India’s democracy,” according to an article by Sanjoy Narayan in the Hindustan Times. He warns that the RTI law “could become toothless.”
India: Video by Arvind Kejriwal on the using the RTI Act, with examples of practical uses.
India: Geetanjali Krishna writes in the Business Standard about one woman’s successful use of the RTI Act to get her pension.
United States: The Department of Justice last week published newly updated regulations on implementation of the Freedom of Information Act, with “several notable changes” described here by Steven Aftergood in Secrecy News. Among other things, the rules now explicitly include news organizations that operate solely on the Internet as “representatives of the news media,” making them exempt from search fees.
United States: An assessment of the National Archives and Records Administration’s FOIA Program by the Office of Government Information Services.
United States: “Overwhelmed by the challenge of trying to sort, identify and preserve historically valuable government email, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has devised what it calls the Capstone approach to email management,” according to a report by Steven Aftergood in Secrecy News.
United States: An interesting account of a yet unsuccessful effort to get source code for teacher evaluations.
United States: FOI and body-worn police cameras, an article by Adam Marshall.
United Kingdom: A short paper by Ben Worthy on the roots of FOI in the UK.
United Kingdom: “From A to Z (Asteroids to Zombies), the British Just Want the Facts,” an article by Bryony Clarke in The New York Times.
Extractive Industry Transparency: Oil industry resistance is undermining transparency rules in the US and the UK, according to Daniel Kaufmann, president of the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI). See interview.
Open Data: African countries have committed to open data “by default, reports William Gerry on the Open Data Institute website.
The African Data Consensus was adopted by the Conference of Ministers which had been convened by the African Union and the UN’s Economic Commission for Africa. The ministers adopted the proposed document put forward by the High Level Conference on the Data Revolution. You can download a copy of the consensus here.
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