Tasmania: RTI requests will be published within 48 hours after being made, the government said, according to ABC.net. “Of course the overwhelming number of RTI requests are made by MPs, people in the media, so we consider it appropriate for that information to be available to all Tasmanians,” Premier Will Hodgman is quoted as saying. “What this will now allow is for anyone who wants to see, to see what that information contains in its entirety, including the questions asked, the material that’s able to be released,” he also said. “It will stop opposition parties from misrepresenting information … because it will be there clearly for members of the public to see.”
Open Data/Privacy: Privacy and openness are “different sides of the same coin – and equally important,” writes Martin Tisne, a director of policy at Omidyar Network.
Public-Private Partnership Transparency: See recorded webcast of seminar sponsored by the World Bank on the topic of FOI laws and public-private partnerships, featuring Prashant Sharma, Global Fellow and Visiting Fellow, Open Society Foundations, New York and United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), Geneva. The seminar was part of a World Bank project on PPPs, including disclosure. There’s a Bank blog and a journal on the topic, too. One review of disclosure in PPP, from 2013, has been published, and another is in process.
Open Data/Germany: A Sunlight Foundation blog post by Júlia Keser? and Christian Heise looks at slow action by G7 countries on open data. It also refers to a newly released paper (in German) in which Open Knowledge Foundation Germany and the stiftung neue verantwortung (“Foundation for a New Responsibility,” SNV) say Germany is lagging on transparency and making suggestions.
Germany: Netzpolitik.org writes (in German) about high fees charges to access information.
United States: Two days of hearings on FOIA before a House committee are summarized by Lauren Harper in the Unredacted blog, who also wraps up many other US FOIA developments, a weekly Unredacted feature.
Transparency Research: A paper (access limited) by Gregory Michener, entitled “Policy Evaluation via Composite Indexes: Qualitative Lessons from International Transparency Policy Indexes.” Abstract:
International transparency policy indexes (ITPIs) help determine billions in investment and aid, influence “authoritative” scholarship, and shape policy choices. Are ITPIs valid yardsticks of transparency, or do they encourage dissimulation? Most scholarship on index-based evaluations focuses on “concept indexes” (e.g., governance) from quantitative approaches. This paper presents qualitative insights about ITPIs in specific and “policy indexes” in general, analyzing three measurement-related pitfalls and proposing countermeasures. Most significantly, it shows how indexes presuppose substitutability while policies contain nonsubstitutable ‘necessary’ policy provisions. This dilemma of “ontological compatibility” means that policies can rank favorably on indexes notwithstanding the absence of lynchpin policy provisions.
India: The government’s three-month RTI fellowships are now open to candidates from journalism and nongovernmental organizations, the Economic Times reports.
Employment: The Open Society Justice Initiative has posted a job notice for a Legal Officer position, seeking a lawyer with 7-10 years’ legal experience, including some litigation experience. Experience litigating freedom of assembly or other criminal or human rights matters is highly desirable; as is experience defending, and advocating for, the rights to freedom of assembly and/or information. Fluency in Portuguese, Spanish, French or Arabic is also highly desirable, in addition to English.
FOIA/Porn: US officials say they will not release under FOIA a library of pornography discovered during the raid on Osama Bin Laden’s compo, citing an “operational files” exemption in the CIA Information Act, and a federal prohibition on mailing obscene material The Washington Post
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