Nigeria: Right to Know Nigeria has created a FoI Case Tracker. The group also issued an animated pamphlet titled “FoI Act; Your Right to Know.”
United States: The House Oversight Committee is soliciting stories about experiences with FOIA, providing an online feedback form. The committee also asked nearly two dozen public interest groups to share their complaints about the federal government’s compliance with requests for government documents, according to an article in The Hill.
Open Data: Open Knowledge has released its new Open Data Handbook.
India: “There is little reason to be jubilant over the Indian government’s decision to set up a panel to look into the Official Secrets Act, 1923 (OSA) in the light of the Right to Information Act, 2005. Like other colonial laws successive governments have found the act a useful bludgeon to silence dissent,” writes Mumbai attorney A.G. Noorani.
India: “In a development that has right to information (RTI) activists up in arms, the Andhra Pradesh government has refused to part with details of the memorandum of understanding (MoU) it signed with the Singapore government on preparing the master plan for the new capital of the residuary state,” reports the Times of India.
United States: The federal government’s backlog of unanswered FOIA requests is growing as the number of workers processing those requests declined, according to many media stories including one in The Baltimore Sun.
United States: “A pro-gun group won a stinging transparency victory over the state of New York after a court ruled that aggregate data on the number of so-called assault rifles must be made public, according to a story in The Blaze.
India: “RTI maverick and journalist Afroz Alam Sahil has been working on a research project on the use of RTI by prisoners for last three months under a fellowship given by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), Government of India,” according to TwoCircles.net.
OGP: Link to recorded session titled “Engaging with Access to Information: the OGP ATI Working Group” held May 6.
Pakistan: Pakistan’s Punjab province’s Transparency and Right to Information Act is a success, according to a report by Samina Naz in an Open Society Foundations blog.
Ireland: Some Irish government departments are reporting a 100 per cent increase in FOI requests since fees were abolished earlier this year, the Irish Times reported. The average increase across all departments and agencies has been 16 per cent for non-personal applications.
European Union: According to an article in the Business Insider the European Court of Justice “right to be forgotten” decision has resulted in 253,617 requests to Google to remove 920,258, with just over 40% of these links across Europe being removed.
Records Management: “The expanding reach of the Freedom of Information Act has introduced a new dynamic at federal agencies, and it is driving the need for IT professionals in the public sector to understand and conduct electronic discovery for records being requested by individuals and private parties under FOIA,” according to an article by Tim Klinger in Federal Computer Week.
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