Latin America: The Alianza Regional por la Libre Expresión e Información has published the seventh edition of its Saber Más report (In Spanish, with English version promised soon). The report contains updates from 16 countries and the theme is “access to information and open data.”
Open Data: A revised Open Data Charter has been released and a campaign for national endorsements is under way. See home page for the effort, including an “About” section with the history of the charter’s development and an FAQs page.
India: Himadrish Suwan, 17, was awarded National RTI Awareness Award-2015 by the RTI Institute of India. In the last three years, he has filed over 100 RTI applications. Himadrish is a student of Shaheed Bhagat Singh College, studying in the second year of Political Science Honours. Himadrish was the youngest ever RTI activist to be awarded with the accolade.
FOI Design: An article, “Achille’s heel or silver bullet? The design of the Guarantor Body in the Access to Public Information,” by Sandra Elena and Álvaro Herrero, discusses how the design of the oversight body can constitute a weakness or a strength to the access to information system. Issue by the Center of Implementation of Public Policies for Equity and Growth.
Video: Access to Information in Africa
Video: “Open” is billed as “The World’s first short film on Open Government, Open Data, and Open Source.” See . Watch Open. Writer and Director: Richard Pietro.
IFTI Watch: The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), Iva Dobichina writes for the Open Society Foundation, is “….Unwittingly Undermining Civil Society.” She reports, “Countries that implement FATF regulations risk facilitating and legitimizing the repression of NGOs and civil society.” The agency established by the G7 to combat money laundering and terrorism financing, “offers its seal of approval to nations that implement its security recommendations.”
Scotland: Rosemary Agnew, Scotland’s information commissioner, says fee-paying schools should be included in a government plan to extend FOI legislation, according to The Daily Record.
Tunisia: Article 19 issues a statement urging the Tunisian Parliament “to implement the new Tunisian constitutional protections for the right to information for all, as an integral part of the right to freedom of expression, by expediting the ratification of the draft fundamental law on access to information.”
Sustainable Development Goals: Read article about the access to information goal in the newly agreed Sustainable Development Goals by Bill Orme, the UN Representative of the Brussels-based GFMD.
OGP: The Open Government Partnership issues a statement in support of the Sustainable Development Goals. The declaration calls on OGP countries to use “to adopt commitments that serve as effective tools for implementation” of the SDGs. A paper by seminal paper, “How Can the Open Government Partnership Accelerate Implementation of the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development?” was presented.
Sustainable Development: Devex reports: “In New York, as United Nations delegates adopted the Sustainable Development Goals this week, celebration met a stern reminder: the goals cannot be achieved without a way to monitor and measure progress toward them. And with that call to action, big data companies are racing to position themselves as ideal partners for development organizations seeking better analysis in real time.
Turkey: “Are we crazy to be working on FOI in Turkey? (Clue: No)” is the provocative headline on an Article 19 blog post.
Environmental Transparency: A new blog on about right to know and pollution is announced by the Word Resources Institute.
Environmental Transparency: WRI also announced a new video from our partners in Mongolia which documents the struggles of the communities in addressing the impacts of gravel pit mining in Mongolia and the critical importance of the right to know.
NATO: The lack of transparency surrounding the NATO budget is described in an article by Ian Davison the website of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. He says, “NATO does not publish an annual financial report on its revenue and expenditure, even though other intergovernmental bodies, such as the EU and World Bank, routinely do this.”
Armenia: The Freedom of Information Center announces for the 13th time the recipients of the “Golden Key and Rusty Lock” awards.
Commonwealth: CHRI has updated its interactive map of the status of RTI in Commonwealth countries.
Lithuania: Transparency International Lithuania has released a novel initiative (in Lithuanian) called Open Courts “This platform enables both the judicial community and the general population of Lithuania to better understand the criterions by which the work of a court or a judge can be measured, hence making the operational peculiarities of the judicial power as such more perceivable.”
Australia: Cool FOI posters, an infographic and Youtube animation from the Office of the Queensland Infoamtion Commissioner.
United States: Muckrock improves its system for reading, editing, and sharing requests.
OECD: All OECD data will become fully accessible by the end of the year, says blog post. See data already available.
Bulgaria: The Access to Information Programme held the 13th Right to Know Day Awards Ceremony Sept. 28. The jury selected the winners in six categories out of 37 nominations received through a special web site www.RightToKnowDay.net.
Serbia: Serbia’s information commissioner says the government’s plan for freedom of information and data protection will not satisfy EU requirements in the membership accession talks, according to an article by Igor Jovanovic in Baltic Insights.
Australia: The Guardian reports on calls for the attorney general, George Brandis, to withdraw the plan to abolish Australia’s freedom of information and privacy watchdog John McMillan, the inaugural Australian information commissioner from 2010 until this year, writes in the Australian about his experience, and responds to FOI critics in a Mandarin article.
India: Wives of government servants have a “right” to know about the salaries of their husbands and the information should be public, the Central Information Commission decides, Zee News reports.
United States: “The Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, is getting its groove back,” according to Mathew Schafer, a media lawyer at Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz, LLP in Washington DC, who also writes, “But FOIA’s current popularity is rivaled by the magnitude of its problems.”
Open Banking: An Open Banking Working Group has been formed in the United Kingdom to make recommendations by the end of 2015 “articulating the framework for designing open standards and open data alongside a timetable for implementation,” according to an article on the Open Data Institute website.
Defamation: The International Press Institute publishes a database on defamation laws.
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