India: At least 39 people who used the RTI Act have been murdered over the last decade and more than 250 Indians have been intimidated so far for using the law, according to an article by Shreya Ila Anasuya in Scroll.in.
Open Data: “A politics of public information worth its salt surely needs to go beyond a focus on what data sees the light of day, towards developing ways of scrutinising, challenging, re-envisaging and re-calibrating the priorities, rationales and methods of public information infrastructures, holistically conceived,” writes Jonathan Gray, Director of Policy and Research at Open Knowledge. The group also issues “a new discussion paper on “Democratising the Data Revolution”, which is intended to advance thinking and action around civil society engagement with the data revolution. It looks beyond the disclosure of existing information, towards more ambitious and substantive forms of democratic engagement with data infrastructures.”
OGP: The Private Sector Council on Open Governance is seeking examples of corporate or business-oriented programs to promote better governance in countries and communities around the world. To submit examples to the Private Sector Council, complete the questionnaire by Aug. 31. “Your examples will help to map and communicate private sector roles in governance partnerships and better align governance programming with existing private sector strengths. Our aim is not to raise funding for partnerships but to identify and share effective practices. We will share the results of the survey at the 2015 OGP Global Summit in Mexico City, Mexico.”
Right to Be Forgotten: An article in The Guardian by Sylvia Tippman and Julia Powles says: “Less than 5% of nearly 220,000 individual requests made to Google to selectively remove links to online information concern criminals, politicians and high-profile public figures, the Guardian has learned, with more than 95% of requests coming from everyday members of the public.” The Guardian discovered new data hidden in source code on Google’s own transparency report.
United States: “The failure of Google to offer users in the U.S. the same “right to be forgotten” protection available in Europe violates U.S. law on unfair and deceptive trade practices, according to the advocacy group Consumer Watchdog,” according a report in Top Tech News. The organization asks the Federal Trade Commission to “investigate and act.”
Brazil: ARTICLE 19 South America launched a report “2016: Violations of access to information in the case of Transolimpica bus rapid transit system (BRT).” The study analyzes access to information in the construction of the Transolímpica BRT – an express bus that will connect the city of Rio de Janeiro ahead of the 2016 Olympic Games. Read the full report here (Portuguese only)
Germany: Lexology summarizes two resolutions that emerged from the June meeting of the Conference of German Commissioners for Freedom of Information. “The first resolution is concerned with the question of transparency in negotiating the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Here, the Conference asks the German government and European Union to provide more information about the negotiation process to the general public. In its second resolution, the Conference calls for more transparency of professional chambers. The Conference is of the opinion that professional chambers perform sovereign tasks and therefore underlie the Federal and Länder laws on access to information.”
Open Budgets: A “bottom-up” Open Budget Survey. “Rather than starting with global best practices on what information governments should release, as the Open Budget Survey does, our bottom-up survey begins by asking what budget information citizens need to hold government to account for a specific issue.
Collective Governance: A new book Beyond Governments: Making Collective Governance Work, by Jonas Moberg and Eddie Rich, drawing on the lessons from the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, is discussed at a World Bank event.
Advocacy: Tania Sanchez, Open Government Guide Coordinator at Transparency and Accountability Initiative describes the value of TAI’s Open Government Guide.
Funding: Making All Voices Count is inviting applications for research, evidence-building and learning grants, under two streams of funding: Practitioner Research & Learning Grants and Research Grants.
United States: More evidence is being produced that suggests certain federal agencies employ labyrinthine systems that seem deliberately designed to keep requesters as far away as possible from responsive documents, reports Tim Cushing of TechDirt.
United Kingdom: My Society reports: “Private data, containing personal details of the general public, is accidentally released by public authorities at least once a fortnight.”
United Kingdom: Matt Burgess publishes a new list of 200+ FOI contact emails for Non-Departmental Public Bodies.
Commentary: “Civic Tech and NGOs … wait, and donors – Can we be better collaborators in global Transparency and Accountability work?” – by Kersti Ruth Wissenbach, Open Knowledge Ambassador in the Netherlands.
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