Aid Transparency: The 2016 Aid Transparency Index released by Publish What You Fund shows that only 10 donors, responsible for only a quarter of all aid, are achieving the international transparency standard. However, most of the organizations covered fall into the lowest three categories, scoring below 60% and “demonstrating that the publication of timely, comparable and disaggregated information about their development projects to the IATI Registry is far from complete.”
OGP: The OGP announces the 15 subnational governments that will be part of a pilot program, designed to identify and involve more people in open government efforts around the world. Governments chosen for the subnational pilot project are: Austin, US; Buenos Aires, Argentina: Jalisco, Mexico: La Libertad, Peru; Ontario, Canada; Sao Paulo, Brazil; Egeyo-Marakwet County, Kenya; Kigoma Municipality, Tanzania; Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana; Madrid, Spain; Paris, France; Scotland, UK; Bojonegoro, Indonesia; Seoul, Korea and Tbilisi, Georgia.
TA&I: The Transparency and Accountability Initiative (T/AI) announces the appointment of a new Executive Director, Michael Jarvis, a World Bank official who most recently heading their extractives governance practice and helping to develop and launch what is now an independent initiative known as the Open Contracting Partnership. As of April 1st, 2016, T/AI will transition to a new, US-based fiscal sponsor called the Proteus Fund, which will host the entity from now on. T/AI will relocate its offices to Washington, D.C., and Michael will be assembling a small DC-based team to support T/AI’s work beginning this summer,
TA&I: “Quick-Win Ideas for Strengthening the Transparency and Accountability Initiative,” according to Nathaniel Heller, Managing Director of Research for Development. He elaborated on four points:
– Transparency donors will be more effective if they are more transparent.
– We need stronger links between TAP work and sector outcomes.
– We need more T/AI donors.
– Invest in the right kind of learning and knowledge dissemination.
Open Contracting/Public-Private Partnerships: “Open Data + Increased Disclosure = Better PPs: Measuring results in Latin America and the Caribbean,” an article with examples by David Bloomgarden, Inter-American Development Bank, and Georg Neumann, Open Contracting Partnership.
India: The Haryana government has reduced the fee being charged to access information under the RTI Act to Rs10 per application from Rs50, according to an article on new rules in The Times of India and another in the Punjab News express. RTI activist PP Kapoor said, “It will help in expansion of the use of RTI Act, which would lead to transparency in the administration system.”
Open Data/United States: The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, a leading research center at the Harvard Kennedy School announces that it has been awarded a grant by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation to establish and support a national peer network of urban Chief Data Officers.
Beneficial Ownership: “How the Panama Papers, EITI and a Global Register Could Change the Policy Impact of Beneficial Ownership Data,” a posting by Erica Westenberg and Anders Pedersen of the Natural Resource Governance Institute.
Bahamas: The government announces a Freedom of Information bill and planned a series of Town Meetings for public consultation on the process, according to The Bahamas Weekly.
Gambia: The Gambia Press Union, in a statement at the 58th Ordinary Session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights in Banjul urged reduction of restrictions on the media and passage of a FOI bill.
Australia: “Australia’s most senior public servants have called for freedom of information laws to be amended to conceal sensitive advice to ministers from public scrutiny,” writes Henry Belot in The Canberra Times. And responses in another article, “APS bosses “self serving” in calls for greater secrecy over FoI laws.
United States: “Past cases suggest Hillary won’t be indicted,” according to an article by Josh Gerstein in Politico.
United States: The US Public Interest Research Group issues its annual ranking of state transparency.
United States: A survey of Louisiana citizens shows that they don’t trust their elected officials and almost unanimous believe that citizens “should have complete access to information about their state government.” “However, when it comes to putting these principles into practice, support is sensitive to the specific kinds of records in question,” says the report by the Reilly Center for Media and Public Affairs at Louisiana State University’s Manship School of Mass Communication. It also reports that 56 percent disagree with the statement that “Sometimes state officials are justified in keeping government information from the public.” Only 37 percent agree that the government is sometimes justified in withholding information.
Open Data: “Decentralized open data is a promising new vector to make that happen,” a blog post by Waldo Jaquith.
United States: Secrecy News reports that latest report from the Department of Defense Chief FOIA Officer notes that some DOD components are “overwhelmed by one or two requesters who try to monopolize the system by filing a large number of requests or submitting disparate requests in groups which require a great deal of administrative time to adjudicate.”
United Kingdom: “Chills, thrills and surprises: ten years of freedom of information in the UK,” a blog post by Ben Worthy, a Lecturer in Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London.
SDG 16: The Transparency, Accountability & Participation Network issues an Advocacy Toolkit for activists concerning the governance portion of the Sustainable Development Goals, SDG 16.
India: “Using the RTI Act to Empower Yourself,” a video by former commissioner Shailesh Gandhi at Moneylife Foundation
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