South Pacific: Rick Snell and Rowena MacDonald publish an article, “Customising Freedom of Information Law Reform in South Pacific Micro-States,” on Taylor & Francis Online in The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs.
Abstract:
This article highlights the importance of adopting a pluralist approach to developing freedom of information (FOI) schemes within specific states in an age of ‘adopter intensification’. The limitations of imposing universal ‘off the shelf’ schemes without addressing multifaceted and unique state requirements are highlighted. The South Pacific Region is utilised as an example that demonstrates adoption is merely the initial and simplest step in an ongoing process of adaption and implementation. Comprehension of the ongoing commitment required in implementing effective FOI schemes should exist prior to legislative conception. Draft schemes must consider not only the supply and demand element of FOI within specific states, but also their broader macro- and micro-level intricacies. Vanuatu and Tonga are used as examples to demonstrate that even where a pluralist and staged approach is undertaken progress can still be slow and problematic.
Bahamas: A lively music video from the FOI campaign in the Bahamas.
Open Data: The Economist writes about open data, praising it, but asking questions. It says in part:
This is all to be celebrated. Given the astonishing scale of the data deluge, though, it is reasonable to ask why more has not been achieved. There are four answers to that. First, the data that have been made available are often useless. Second, the data engineers and entrepreneurs who might be able to turn it all into useful, profitable products find it hard to navigate. Third, too few people are capable of mining data for insights or putting the results to good use. Finally, it has been hard to overcome anxieties about privacy.
Liberia: Lamii Kpargoi, currently a Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow at the National Endowments for Democracy and head of the Liberia Media Center, writes about FOI in Liberia, concluding:
I wondered to myself, how could the Liberian Government, in particular, have such strong positions on good governance and access to information at international forums and quite a laissez-faire attitude to the same principles back at home? Then it dawned on me with clarity that this two-faced attitude suits the government’s international agenda.
It seems like many countries that practice bad governance have come to realize that as long as they take token measures back home and say the right things on the outside, they do not have to put in place and serious reforms inside their countries to be accorded recognition.
United States: A task force recommends a national drone registration system. The report also says registration information should be exempt from any Freedom of Information Act requests. A Slate column by Justine Peters rebuts the proposed exemption.
FOI and Academia: “Is the Freedom of Information Act Stifling Academic Freedom?” asks journalist and biologist Emily Willingham in a Forbes article.
Open Data: The Citizens Police Data Project houses police disciplinary information obtained from the City of Chicago through FOI litigation. Of 28,567 allegations of misconduct filed against Chicago Police Department officers between March 2011 and September 2015, less than 2% of those complaints resulted in any discipline.
United States: The Government Should Stop Rewarding Bad Policies for Police Body Cameras writes Jake Laperruque in Just Security.
Japan: The Japanese government postpones a visit by David Kaye, Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, Kaye writes on his website.
EU: Journalists representing all European member states file complaints with the European Court of Justice against the European Parliament. The institution refused to grant the journalists’ requests for access to information related to how the 751 members of Parliament spend their allowances.
Public-Private Partnership: The World Bank Group is seeking comment on a draft Framework for Disclosure in Public-Private Partnership Projects, a systematic structure for proactively disclosing information.
FOI: The UK group MySociety publishes comments on FOI from people in organizations worldwide who run FOI websites all over the world. “Many of them have seen the introduction of such restrictions (and some have successfully challenged them).”
United Kingdom: The Press Gazette investigation publishes articles showing that few local councils appear to keep a tally of the cost of answering FOI requests, questioning arguments that compliance is a burden.
Sierra Leone: An effective open data system will transform the lives of people by allowing them to make better decisions, according to Jeanne Holm, a professor in Civic Innovation and Data Science at the University of California, US, who is heading a team of World Bank consultants on the mission to help Sierra Leone assess its readiness for the open data initiative. She tells an APA reporter that that her findings reveal a readiness on the part of the authorities, but that obstacles like lack of access to internet and electricity constituted major challenges. “Another concern of the consultant is the existence of a Secrecy Act in Sierra Leone, which prevents government officials to divulge information to citizens.”
United States: OpentheGovernment’s blog reflects on the the civil society consultation process in the lead-up to the third US OGP national action plan.
United States: How business uses the FOI law, described in article by Wall Street Journal by Brody Mulins and Christopher Weaver. “Finance professionals have been pulling every lever they can these days to extract information from the government. Many have discovered that the biggest lever of all is the one available to everyone—the Freedom of Information Act—conceived by advocates of open government to shine light on how officials make decisions. FOIA is part of an array of techniques sophisticated investors are using to try to obtain potentially market-moving information about products, legislation, regulation and government economic statistics.”
United States: Pornographic emails on the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office computers are not public records under Pennsylvania’s Right-to-Know Law, but nothing stops Attorney General Kathleen Kane from releasing them, an appeals court rules, according to a TribLive report. “What makes an email a ‘public record,’ then, is whether the information sought documents an agency transaction or activity, and the fact whether the information is sent to, stored on or received by a public or personal computer is irrelevant in determining whether the email is a ‘public record,’ ” the court said. The state Office of Open Records has said that “the use of e-mails to transmit pornographic material is an ‘activity’ documenting an employee’s improper use of an agency’s time and resources making it a ‘record’ within the meaning of the RTKL.” The whole story? Too complicated to summarize. Here’s a recent article by Phillycom that tries to summarize the latest on this complex story.
Commentary: Civic hacker and open government advocate Josh Tauberer questions providing information as the way to fix government. He ends:
- If you’re dedicated to fixing democracy, I can’t help you. Your ego is far too big.
- Narrow your focus. The world is unbelievably complicated. Pick a small problem. It’ll turn out to be a big problem in disguise.
- Make sure you’re solving a problem real people have, and preferably people with less power than you. Real problems are out there, and you may have to step away from your computer if you want to help fix them.
- Governance is about power. Power is a social thing, not a technological thing. Websites don’t magically give people power.
- Find a problem that you can make a unique contribution to, based on your own life experiences. Become an expert in it. Get a real job where you can become that expert. And then lead change on making that thing better.
- Find the humility to say your idea might be total crap, and demonstrate that you are willing to let your experiences guide you.
Virgin Islands: A dispute erupts over omitting all names from weekly police arrest blotters, reports Ken Silva in the BVI Beacon.
Canada: Jacob Boon writes about FOI reforms passed in June in Newfoundland and Labrador, and the man behind them, Steve Kent, Deputy Premier with the province’s Progressive Conservative government.
United States: OpenTheGovernment in a blog post emphasizes that the ongoing email debate “represents an important challenge for the openness community to channel the attention towards the fundamentally important questions relating to government openness and accountability, particularly around the government’s electronic record-keeping practices.”
Nigeria: Reflections on the FOI law by Uche Igwe, a doctoral Researcher at the Department of Politics, School of Law, Politics and Sociology, University of Sussex.
Nigeria: The US Columbia Journalism Review publishes an article by Alex Hannaford critical of Nigeria’s Freedom of Information Act.
FOI Humor: An interview by Kelly Hinchcliffe with Curtis Raye who created FOIA Love: A Comedy Show About Public Records after spending nearly a year working as a field organizer for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.
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