FOI Success: Part Two in a blog post series to highlight interesting and impactful requests that have been made through the 25 websites running with Alaveteli FOI software across the world. You can see Part One here. Four interesting stories, from Hungary’s Alaveteli site KiMitTud and the pan-European site AsktheEU.
Brazil: Article 19’s Brazil office has released a new report entitled “Paths of Transparency – the Access to Information Law and the Law Courts” It was published May 12 to mark the anniversary of the Access to Information Law (AIL), which came into force in May 2012. “Four years after the entry into force of the AIL, Courts of Justice throughout Brazil have still not adapted to the minimum standards of transparency recommended for public bodies. On the contrary, the current state of affairs shows that much remains to be done in this area.”
Civic Tech Reflections/Research: Stacey Donohue, Investment Partner of the Omidyar Network writes about lessons learned after Omidyar has invested in the civic tech sector. Over a decade Omidyar has invested nearly $90 million in 35 nonprofit and for-profit organizations around the world. Commissioned research about civic tech in the US was done by Purpose, “a public benefit corporation.” The report reached five main conclusions:
- Grassroots activity is expanding across the US
- Talk is turning to action
- There is an engaged core, but it is very small in number
- Civic tech is growing but still lacking scale
- Common themes, but no shared vision or identity
On the later point, the report said that “there is room for civic tech to grow in aligning actors around an overall agenda or narrative against which the community as a whole can orient and organize itself.” Read the full report by visiting Engines of Change: What Civic Tech Can Learn From Social Movements.
Israel: The Israeli Supreme Court ordered Israel’s Foreign Ministry to disclose the names of the participants at a seder dinner hosted by the Israeli Ambassador to the U.S., Ron Dermer, in April 2014, according to a post by Elena Chachko in the Lawfare blog.
Mongolia: Paul Bitner reports in The Diplomat that while visiting Mongolia United States Secretary of State John Kerry “nudged Mongolia to implement a bilateral transparency agreement signed in 2013, which has been slow to come to fruition.” Bitner explained, “The agreement would require Mongolia to publish an explanation for any proposed regulation in English—at present an uncommon occurrence—and allow for public comments on those proposals, among other measures.” Kerry called the transparency agreement “a very important step to be able to attract foreign direct investment.”
Sri Lanka: Parliamentary Affairs and Mass Media Minister Gayantha Karunathilake announces that the RTI bill will be presented in Parliament on June 21.
OGP: New Chief Executive Officer Sanjay Pradhan speaks about OGP challenges, stressing the need to ensure “a genuine co-creation of actions between government and civil society.”
Liberia: Chris Nyenapee of LINA writes that the Carter Center in collaboration with the Gedeh Information Network has trained over 50 women from 20 civil society and women groups from Tchien District and the capital Zwedru in assessing information under the Freedom of Information (FOI) program.
United States: A California Senate committee kills a bill to increase transparency in police misconduct investigations, hampering victims’ efforts to obtain justice, Mintpress reports.
United States: The First Amendment Foundation and The Poynter Institute have joined forces to create innovative online training on Florida’s sunshine laws. Each Sunshine Certificate program provides an overview of Florida’s open meetings and public records laws, as well as the ethics requirements incumbent upon public officials and employees. And each is tailored for a specific audience, according to a .
Sweden: A planned book to commemorate the 250th anniversary in December of the Swedish/Finnish FOI law will be translated into English. The details are still to be settled, it is possible that the publication will be exclusively electronic, but it is to be a full translation of the contents of the printed book (which is expected to contain about 600 pages). Timing still unclear. Separately, the National Archives website has a theme page (mostly in Swedish) that gathers texts and materials related to the freedom of the press issue in the 1700s and later.
Open Corporate Data: “Sustainability information wants to be free,” According to Charlie Ashford is a Consultant at Corporate Citizenship writing in the Corporate Citizenship blog. Subtitle: “A growing amount of data is available online that is beyond companies’ control, writes Charlie Ashford. Transparency is the only response.”
Filed under: What's New