United Kingdom: The Information Commissioner issues a document looking at “the question of how to achieve greater transparency about services and functions outsourced by public authorities, and the role that the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) plays in this. We highlight the uncertainty about what information is in scope of FOIA and explain how we deal with this question. We set out an approach based on the idea of ‘transparency by design’ and we explain what this means. We also provide a view on whether contractors should be designated as public authorities and whether FOIA should be amended.” The ICO reports “a transparency gap has opened up in the provision of public service”, and sets out a range of solutions to tackle the issue. This is described, along with other news, in the ICO April newsletter.
Civic Space: Nathaniel Heller writes that civil society needs to be protected from government surveillance and that such provisions should be included in national action plans prepared by members of the Open Government Partnership.
United States: Secretary of State John Kerry asks the department’s inspector general to look into procedures for handling emails. See reports in Reuters and Wall Street Journal.
Transparency History: Elizabeth Yale, a science historian and an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Iowa Center for the Book, relates the “bag of cordover” used for secret documents in 17th Century Great Britain and Hillary Clinton’s emails.
UNESCO: UNESCO introduced its Opendata site on March 16. The site includes data on 982 country projects, 430 regional projects, and 516 global projects that UNESCO has supervised since 1970. See news release.
“Opendata.UNESCO.org is intended to present comprehensive, quality and timely information about UNESCO’s projects, enabling users to find information by country/region, funding source, and sector and providing com prehensive project data, including budget, expenditure, completion status, implementing organization, project documents, and more. It publishes program and financial information that are in line with UN system-experience of the IATI (International Aid Transparency Initiative) standards and other relevant transparency initiatives.
Transparency Research: Two articles by Dr. S.G. Grimmelikhuijsen, Assistant Professor at Utrecht University: The Effects of Judicial Transparency on Public Trust: Evidence from a Field Experiment and Transparency in Public-Private Partnerships: Not so Bad After All?
United States: West Virginia amends its FOIA law to require the Secretary of State to maintain a database of all Freedom of Information Act requests and remove the ability of government agencies to charge money for preparing the information needed to fulfill the request. The bill also removes the ability for individuals or organizations, including media, to request specific information pertaining to concealed carry permits, according to a Charleston Daily Mail article.
United Kingdom: More commentary on the court ruling on disclosing Prince Charles’ letters to government, by Alistair Sloan.
United States: USA TODAY obtained copies of internal Justice Department policies that spell out when and how they should share information with defense lawyers.
United States: Is there too much sunshine in government? – a column by Des Moines Register writer Kathie Obradovich.
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