Open Government Partnership: The OGP Access to Information Working Group has published the OGP ATI Commitment Directory containing all ATI pledges made in the national action plans. This is the second edition. Comments are being accepted and a third version is in the works.
OGP: Joe Foti, program manager of the OGP independent review mechanism writes about the large new batch of country progress reports just released. He expands on five points:
- Governments are including civil society more in their planning.
- Checking the boxes is not enough.
- OGP needs to tackle the big issues.
- More focus is needed on follow through and completion.
- Starred commitments point the way victory.
Pakistan: An Academic Network on Right to Information (ANoRTI) was launched at a two-day briefing to academia on the state of RTI, organized by Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency. Speakers and participants agreed that the RTI should be included in university curricula across the country, according an article in The Tribune. Also see coverage in The Observer and The Daily Times.
India: Noted technocrat Satyanarayan Gangaram ‘Sam’ Pitroda is quoted as saying:
“Today we have RTI but we do not have information available in digital format. Our idea was to computerize all government files but bureaucrats refuse to change. Digital India requires a huge amount of process engineering which we are not willing to do,” Pitroda said. “Cabinet secretaries are not willing to do it (digitize).”
European Union: The European Ombudsman, Emily O’Reilly, welcomed the progress made so far during her inquiry but has asked the European Commission further to improve the transparency of its 800 plus expert groups by publishing comprehensive minutes of their meetings.
Italy: FOIA4Italy launches a petition. “Italy Needs a Proper Freedom of Information Act!” writes Corallina Lopez Curzi of the Italian Coalition for Civil Rights and Freedoms. Another commentary, by Viralba Azzollini, says the proposed draft law makes mockery of promised transparency. (In Italian)
Webinar: World Bank Open Learning Campus e-webinar Feb. 9, 10-11 a.m. EST on “Threats to Openness” with Julie McLeod, Michael Moss and David Thomas of Northumbria University. Registration is available at the following link:
United States: Hillary Clinton’s Email Habits: Careless or Criminal? The New York Times publishes two views.
United States: Freelance journalist Annie Byrnes summarizes problems with the Michigan state FOI law exposed in the walk of the crisis of the water supply in Flint, Mich. Another article on the subject by Anna Clark in Boston Review.
United States: “Coming to Terms with Secret Law” by Dakota S. Rudesill in the Harvard National Security Journal.
Canada: “Open government push requires ‘cultural shift’ in public service, federal documents warn,” according to a Toronto Star story.
Bangladesh: M Golam Rahman, a professor of Mass Communication and Journalism Department of Dhaka University, is appointed as the chief information commissioner, The Daily Star reports.
United Kingdom: A webpage by the Campaign for Freedom of Information is a good source for news and background on the ongoing campaign to resist restrictive FOI amendments.
Ukraine: An fhi360 article recounts a discussion on how transparency can help the economy. “The reformist agenda pursued by Ukraine’s Ministry of Infrastructure in recent years, in which open data initiatives have played a central role, offers a sound precedent for Ukrainian institutions seeking to build the trust of investors and the population at large.”
Transparency Research: Erna Ruijer and Albert Meijer publish a paper in the International Journal of Public Administration comparing the transparency regimes in the US and the Netherlands. Abstract:
Technology development and democratization have been identified as the general drivers of the worldwide thrust in transparency. But what transparency regimes do these drivers generate in different countries? This mixed method study indicates that national regimes are different due to pre-existing institutional differences and critical junctures in the historical development of transparency regimes. Our analysis shows that the U.S. transparency regime can be characterized as a rules-based approach while a principles-based transparency regime prevails in the Netherlands. This article nuances the debate about the global character of transparency and highlights two different outcomes of the push for transparency.
Development Transparency: A post on a World Bank blog by Christophe Dossarps describes the International Infrastructure Support System (IISS) – a digital platform that supports project preparation.
Beneficial Ownership: Governments should commit to company ownership transparency in their OGP National Action Plans,” writes Rosie Sharpe in the OGP blog.
Open Data: “Data will only get us so far. We need it to be open” according to a World Economic Forum post was written by Stephen Walker, Executive Director of Information Management and Open Government Canada, Government of Canada; Jose M. Alonso, Programme Manager, Open Data at the World Wide Web Foundation. They write: “ Much has been said of the potential of data to revolutionise business and relationships. But data will only get us so far on its own. We also need it to be relevant, timely, and usable. They also point out, “To date, only limited progress has been made globally on releasing open government data sets.”
Open Data: An Open Society Foundations blog post by Shamil Ibragimov extolls the value of open data using an example from Kyrgzystan.
Open Policy-Making: A UK government manual includes information about Open Policy Making as well as the tools and techniques policy makers can use to create more open and user led policy.
Aid Transparency: Oxfam warns about the slow and opaque use of Ebola recovery funds. “The $5.8bn in funds pledged by global leaders for Ebola recovery have been slow to materialise and are almost impossible to track.”
Open Data: Open Knowledge announces that it has received funding from Google “to work on tool integration for Data Packages as part of our broader work on Frictionless Data to support the open data community.”
Open Data: “While there’s no question the advent of technology brings massive potential, it is already creating significant access and achievement divides,” writes Sean McDonald.
Open Source: “We believe that a sustainable, waste free, circular economy needs transparency, open access to information and open source solutions,” according to Open Source Circular Economy.
Trade Transparency: United Nations human rights expert Alfred de Zayas called on governments not to sign the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) without reaffirming their human rights treaty obligations and their recent pledges to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. “The TPP is fundamentally flawed and should not be signed or ratified unless provision is made to guarantee the regulatory space of States.”
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