OGP Contest: “Making Transparency Count” is the focus of a new OGP contest, deadline June 27. Read more here.
Nigeria: “The Nigerian government has released statement declaring the total amount of cash recovered from looters of the federal treasury since the inception of President Muhammadu Buhari’s tenure. A statement issued by the Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, however, did not reveal the names of persons from whom the recoveries were made.” This according to Sahara Reporters.
India: Shailesh Gandhi, former Central Information Commissioner, expresses strong doubts about RTI for the private sector in an interview with First Post.
I don’t think it is practical to do that. Implementation is a major challenge. If you do it with the private sector, with a weak judicial system in place, it will be a complete disaster. If each company goes and challenges it in a court, the situation will be untenable. Worldwide, only South Africa has brought private firms under the RTI ambit and, there, the experience has not been good.
United States: “Exclusive: Snowden Tried to Tell NSA About Surveillance Concerns, Documents Reveal,” write Jason Leopold, Marcy Wheeler, and Ky Henderson in VICE.
Pakistan: The RTI Act has helped in bringing transparency and accountability in Jammu and Kashmir, according to a report by the State Information Commission. But “even seven years after the enactment” over 60 public authorities “are reluctant” to make proactive disclosures required by the law, reports The Daily Excelsior.
Peru: The Constitutional Court rules that a municipal district has an obligation to provide copies of cassette tapes to a requester, notwithstanding its claim to lack the technology to make copies, as explained in a blog post (in Spanish) by Dania Coz Baron of Justice and Transparency.
United States: Nate Jones of the National Security Archive writes about the intra-agency referral merry-go-round.
United States: “Embracing Transparency, Chicago Releases Details on 101 Open Investigations Into Police Incidents,” writes Leon Neyfakh in Slate.
United States: The Central Intelligence Agency creates the CIA Records Search Tool (CREST) for a portion the CIA’s declassified materials, as described in Wired.
United States: A FOI reform bill for South Carolina appeared to be dead Thursday after the Senate didn’t debate it for 15 months, reports Jeffrey Collins for AP.
United States: A review of the US FOIA data by Max Galka.
Environmental Transparency: An overview article by Sara Schwartz on the blog of The Access Initiative of the World Resources Institute.
Budget Transparency: “Civil society organizations (CSOs) need to be able to use fiscal information to put pressure on governments,” according to a blog post on institutionalized participation channels.
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