Rulemaking: “In one-fourth of the economies measured, governments do not give notice of proposed regulations, publish draft texts nor engage with the general public before implementing new rules,” according to the World Bank, which has issued a dataset on rulemaking that covers 185 countries and reflects inputs from the private sector and governments. Country findings, scores, methodology and first-cut analysis are available on the website.
FIFA: Opening up Fifa’s data – including datasets related to its expenditure and contracting, governance and development projects – would enable the world to better understand the decisions it makes and help us to hold its members to account. The call by NewFIFANow.org for FIFA reform proposes a variety of transparency steps, including publications of meetings minutes and budgets, but do not include a regime for making document or data requests.
European Union: The European Ombudsman, Emily O’Reilly, welcomes transparency measures proposed by Eurogroup President, Jeroen Dijsselbloem. The Eurogroup is comprised of the finance ministers of the eurozone.
International: “Global freedom declined for the 10th consecutive year in 2015, as economic pressures and fear of unrest led authoritarians to crack down on dissent, while migration and terrorism fueled xenophobia in democracies,” according to a FreedomHouse summary of its latest report. FOI is a small part of the scoring, one of 16 points in the “functioning of government” topic. See methodology here.
Pakistan: The Digital Rights Foundation and the Coalition of Right to Information release their fourth report on “The State of Proactive Disclosure of Information in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab Public Bodies,” as summarized by The Nation and Pakistan Today.
India: “A raft of barmy queries under the Right to Information (RTI) Act has swamped Modi’s office, underlining the often frivolous use of an otherwise empowering tool that helps hold the country’s vast and powerful bureaucracy and politicians accountable,” according to an article in the Hindustan Times.
Open Data: “Open data folks could have a lot to learn from the API community, and vice-versa is true too. As the open data field is about exposing information, there is much overlap between open data and APIs or Application Programming Interfaces, which expose an application’s data or functionalities for third party integration.” So begins a posting on the Nordicapis blog.
Bosnia: A new report by Brana, a coalition of 23 NGOs formed at the end of 2014 to monitor the transparency of recovery projects and international donations used in Bosnia after the floods, highlights the lack of transparency on use of reconstruction money.
Canada: “Open government at a crossroad: Canada needs better funding and access to information reform,” writes Mary Francoli, an associate professor at Carleton University’s school of journalism and communication, and the Canadian Independent Researcher for the OGP. The article was published in Hill Times.
United States: “Troubling legislation in four states would seriously undermine the public’s right to know and ability to hold government officials accountable,” writes Jonathan Anderson, chairman of the Society of Professional Journalists’ FOI Committee.
Two of the bills — in Indiana and New Jersey — would restrict access to police body camera footage. Legislation in Florida would make it more difficult for citizens and the press to challenge improper government secrecy. And Massachusetts lawmakers are set to vote on a measure that, while aimed at improving the state’s public records law, could do the opposite.
United States/Open Data: “2015 was a year of great advancement in open data initiatives,” according to a blog post by Kristen Honey, a Policy Advisor at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
United States: The California Department of Technology launches a new office designed to find creative ways the state can use open source technology to open its data to the public, according to a blog posted on the Department of Technology’s website and described by Statescoop.
United Kingdom: Information about prison attacks, penalty fares on London Overground, whistleblowing policies in the NHS and parking tickets has all been withheld under the FOI Act because this information was held by public authority contractors and not by the authorities themselves, but this should change, the Campaign for Freedom of Information says.
United States: Openthegovernment.org and the American Society of Newspaper Editors announce a new resource “to help make open government a key part of the election-year discussion.” They created a set of questions to be asked of federal candidates “to ensure they are transparent about their views on government openness.”
Ghana: OccupyGhana writes to the Attorney-General and Minister for Transport, “asking for all the information surrounding the Smartty’s Bus branding contract that has been impugned by the Attorney-General herself.” In the absence of a FOI law, the request is based on article 21(1)(f) of the Constitution, according to an article in News Ghana.
Open Fisheries: Transparency is discussed at the first International Conference on the Fisheries Transparency Initiative (FITI) held in Mauritania, as reported by The Fish Site.
Data Journalism: The views of a skeptic, Eva Constantaras, a data journalist and trainer specialized in cross-border journalism projects. “Data journalism boot camps and hackathons, which began as a place to generate buzz around the open data movement, have now become a cheap substitute for actual sustainable investment in data journalism capacity.”
India: “Unsettled Right to Privacy can unsettle RTI ?” — an article in Live Law by Madabhushi Sridhar.
Government agencies are using right of privacy to stonewall the requests for information. Privacy of a person need to be protected but public interest is higher than the private interests. Apex court and several High Courts’ verdicts also offered this protection to individuals working in public offices, at the cost of people’s right to information.
India: A scoop by Sagnik Chowdhury in the Indian Express says; “A high-level committee formed last year by the Union government to look into provisions of Official Secrets Act (OSA) in light of the Right to Information (RTI) Act may soon suggest to stakeholder ministries that OSA remains unchanged and that, instead, excessive secrecy be done away with by relaxing criteria for classifying information.”
United Kingdom: A new article on a decade on FOI: Worthy, Ben and Hazell, Robert, (2015) “Disruptive, Dynamic and Democratic? Ten Years of Freedom of Information in the UK” Parliamentary Affairs, (forthcoming) see draft.
Israel: The Supreme Court says a lower court failed to follow proper procedure when it ordered the Prime Minister’s Office to divulge information, according to an article at Israelhayom.com
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