India: The Central Information Commission directs the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi and Union home ministry to disclose the report on the basis of which Delhi assembly was dissolved in November 2014, saying the Lieutenant Governor does not enjoy immunity from disclosing such reports, according to the text of the decision and articles such as in The Hindustan Times. Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung said that the information he passed on to the Union cabinet was confidential, but the CIC disagreed and said all relevant documents must be available to the public. The agency also stressed that advice on political crises, given to the Governor or President, cannot be treated as confidential.
United States: The State Department’s inspector general issues a report criticized Hillary Clinton’s exclusive use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, as described here by The New York Times.
Open Meeting Futures: “Transparency in the 21st century also means providing the public with, for instance, audio and video streaming of government meetings, with instant, real-time access to transcripts that can be searched to find every mention of a certain word or from a particular speaker. It also means being able to easily and quickly share audio, video, and text with colleagues, friends, and the general public, whether via email or social media.” So writes Enrico Giannotti, Vice President of Cedat 85, an Italian software company that has worked closely with the Italian Government to implement innovative technical solutions to enhance the openness and transparency of government meetings through DIGITAL4DEMOCRACY,
FOI Success: MySociety features the stories of two interesting requests; one from Australia’s Alaveteli site RightToKnow and one from Ukrainian site Dostup do Pravdy.
United States: A Senate committee clears legislation (S. 2852) to open up government data.
United States: A court rules that if teachers can qualify for reduced FOIA less, then so can students.
Malaysia: “Obtaining documents via the freedom of information (FOI) enactment of Penang is both tedious and troublesome because of the amount of red tape involved, says state Gerakan acting youth chief Jason Loo,” writes Free Malaysia Today. “He said the process to obtain information was not user-friendly and the long wait, coupled with the plethora of documents that needed to be filled-up and submitted, did not reflect the Penang Government’s pledge to be transparent about their dealings.”
Canada: The Centre for Law and Democracy in Canada critiques British Columbia’s changes to the province’s FOI system. “Among these was a directive to publish the details of right to information requests – including the substance of the request and the identity of the requester – as soon as the requests were lodged,” CLD says. “This policy needs to be reconsidered as it actually undermines access.”
Right to Be Forgotten: The US Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press submitted a letter on behalf of a large coalition of U.S. news organizations supporting Google in its clashes with the French data protection agency, CNIL, over implementation of this new right. Regulators at CNIL have continued to insist that to comply with French law Google must remove search results worldwide and have fined the company for resisting.
Open Heroines: A report on the formation of a “a global group of over 90 women (and counting!) who work in the fields of open government, open data and civic tech.”
United States: The New Mexico Foundation for Open Government reports that it took anywhere from two days to several weeks for many government offices in the state to fulfill public records requests and more than a dozen failed to respond at all.
United States: The House advances a measure that would subject the White House’s team of national security advisers to the FOIA, the Free Beacon reports.
Europe: Factsheets in English on EU countries with details on many topics, including e-government and access to information, prepared by the European Commission.
Australia: In Tasmania, a motion is introduced to amend the RTI to allow refusals by a minister’s staff to be reviewed by the Ombudsman, reports The Mercury.
United States: Five top advisers to New York Mayor Bill de Blasio are named as “agents of the city,” meaning that some of their communications with the mayor are now being shielded from public view, according to reports in DNAInfo and The New York Post.
United States: The Office of Information Policy published its annual Summary and Assessment of the Chief FOIA Officer Reports for 2016. “It’s hard to take their findings seriously, however, when they conclude that agencies earned overwhelmingly positive marks despite growing dissatisfaction among requesters who use the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA),” according a blog post by The Project on Government Oversight.
Trade Transparency: The US OpenTheGovernment.org and seven other open government groups submit recommendations for the 2016 U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Open Government Plan. The recommendations:
- Publish U.S. textual proposals on rules in ongoing international trade negotiations;
- Publish consolidated texts after each round of ongoing negotiations; and
- Appoint a “transparency officer” who does not have structural conflicts of interest in promoting transparency at the agency
Transparency Research/United States: “FoIA in the age of Open Government,” an analysis of the performance of the FOIA under the Obama and Bush administrations in Government Information Quarterly by Ben Wasike, an associate professor in the Communication Department at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. He teaches classes in visual communication, communication theory and social media communication among others. Full article costs, but abstract says:
This study used five standard Department of Justice FoIA parameters to analyze and compare FoIA performance between the Obama and Bush administrations in terms of: efficiency, disposition, type of exemptions, redress and staff workload. Results indicate that while efficiency is higher under Obama, agencies are releasing information only in part. While appeals were processed faster under Bush, petitioners have had more success under Obama. Additionally, FoIA staff workload has dramatically reduced under Obama. One notable finding was that contrary to popular media outcry, neither administration evoked national security and law enforcement exemptions as much as has been widely claimed. Legacy and commonality were also findings indicating that certain trends transcend the incumbent. Implications to government transparency and pertinent issues are discussed within.
India: The Central Information Commission sets June 20 for a hearing on petitions against six national political-parties, demanding that the central and state governments immediately stop all direct and indirect government-funding to political-parties for having defied a 2013 CIC decision making them subject to the RTI Act, LawLive reports.
India: The state of Maharashtra “is mulling a website that would deal exclusively with Right To Information (RTI) queries, while most of its departments are loathe to cater to even the simplest of them,” reports Vijay Chavan in The Pune Mirror.
India: Criticisms continue of the over the removal of chapters on Jawaharlal Nehru and RTI from the new textbooks in Rajasthan, The Hindustan Times reports.
New Zealand: The political party NZ First “has pulled its support for a bill that makes parliamentary under-secretaries subject to the Official Information Act because they don’t want to agree with ACT leader David Seymour,” according to an article in Stuff.
Media Development Funding: The US Center for International Media Assistance issues Profiles in Media Development Funding, a new online resource on media development funding, done with support from the Open Society Foundations.
United Kingdom: “FOI: cutting the cost,” an article by FOIMan blogger Paul Gibbons highlights his list of options “that the Act itself offers” to cut costs:
– charging for requests;
– refusing requests on cost grounds and limits on searching;
– stating that information is not held;
– using section 14 to refuse burdensome requests;
– making information available in publication schemes; and
– stating that information that is ‘otherwise accessible.
India: City’s St Xavier’s College and NGO Pehchan conducted training for nearly 100 homeless people on Right to Information Act and filing RTI applications, according to an article in the Free Press Journal.
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