Malaysia: The response from citizens to the 2010 Penang Freedom of Information Enactment “has been positively lukewarm,” according to a top official and statistics quoted in an article by Boo Su-Lyn in the Malay Mail. Civil servants are afraid to release information, the article says. Penang Deputy Chief Minister II Prof. P. Ramasamy said there were 71 applications last year, an average of six a month, since the FOI enactment came into force in January 2015 and 47 up to June this year.
Pakistan: The Cabinet is expected to take up the draft of the Right to Information Bill, 2016, in its next meeting, The Tribune reports. It says the information ministry is planning to review the bill as soon as the law ministry returns the draft and to circulate to stakeholders for comment. Separately, the province of Sindh Cabinet has approved an RTI bill, according to DunyaNewsTV.
OGP: The Civil Society members of the OGP Steering Committee announce “OGP Strategy Dialogues:” online and offline conversations. See blog post by the civil society co-chairs, Alejandro Gonzalez and Manish Bapna. Also see perspective on OGP in Africa by Mukelani Dimba, Executive Director of the Open Democracy Advice Centre. He writes, “… it is noted with concern that commitments relating to realization of socio-economic rights and development, and protection of civil and political rights form the smallest category of commitments being made by OGP countries.”
India: The Central Information Commission has decided to publish a book on success stories of the RTI Act that will be released by the prime minister in the forthcoming annual convention in October, DNA India says.
WikiLeaks: Associated Press reporters Raphael Satter and Maggie Michael write that WikiLeaks’ data dumps have included the personal information of hundreds of people.
Transparency Research: “Resistant to Coups? Transparency,” according to an article by researchers James R. Hollyer, B. Peter Rosendorff, and James Raymond Vreeland.
Venezuela: Transparency Venezuela in conjunction with the Venezuelan Institute of Social and Political Studies (Invesp) held a workshop on the draft Law of Transparency, Disclosure and Access to Public Information in order to meet the proposals from youth addresses of political parties and NGOs are used as input.
Open Data: “Why open data doesn’t mean open government,” writes Eleanor Ross in The Guardian. She says, “China and Russia are beginning to selectively share state information with the public, but democracy requires more than just data.”
Bangladesh: The Information Commission can help combat the reluctance of civil servants to disclose information, according to a Daily Star article by Shamsul Bari and Ruhi Naz, Chairman, Research Initiatives, Bangladesh (RIB) and Project Coordinator (RTI section), RIB, respectively.
India: The Kerala High Court stays the State Information Commission’s order making all decisions finalized in the cabinet, available to the public under the RTI Act, reports the Deccan Chronicle.
United States: The Government Accountability Office (GAO) releases two reports assessing the federal government’s work on the DATA Act. Nine months from now, in May 2017, every federal agency must begin reporting standardized spending data, according to the Data Coalition.
Liberia: “It’s been nearly two years since the InfoLib Liberia project with iLab Liberia started,” says My Society. “In that time the project has faced many hurdles, some predicted, and some completely unforeseen.”
Mexico: A Senate Committee discusses the annual report of the National Institute of Transparency and Access to Public Information and Data Protection (NACI), reports El Punto Critico (in Spanish). Separately, NACI commissioner Joel Salas Suarez says information is crucial to ending social and economic inequality.
FOI Success: A My Society blog post highlighting requests from Alaveteli sites.
India: Social activist Aruna Roy receives the prestigious Upendra Nath Brahma Soldier of Humanity Award 2016. Roy is the co-founder of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathana (MKSS), a social and grassroots organization that played a crucial role in the establishment of the RTI Act, the Assam Times reports.
Azerbaijan: The State Committee for Property Affairs has simplified access to information on facilities set out for privatization, putting data on a privatization portal, according an ABC report.
Transparency Research: Professors Scott Douglas and Albert Meijer publish a paper: “Transparency and Public Value-Analyzing the Transparency Practices and Value Creation of Public Utilities.” The abstract says:
This article examines to what extent transparency is a condition for the creation of public value. Transparency is usually narrowly defined as a tool for external stakeholders to monitor the internal workings of an organization, but public value management positions transparency as a broader instrument for actively engaging stakeholders. We investigate empirically whether transparency is indeed necessary to create public value, distinguishing between transparency about operational capacity, authorizing environment, and value proposition. We find that more transparent public organizations achieved higher public value scores, especially if they disclosed information about the design and dynamics of their authorizing environment.
United States: The Office of Information Policy OIP sets up a new page on its website dedicated to the work of the Chief FOIA Officer (CFO) Council.
United States: A new California law took effect on July 1, S.B. 272, adding a new section to the California Public Records Act that requires local agencies (except school districts) to publish inventories of “enterprise systems” on their websites, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is organizing a “database hunt.”
India: A recent study has found 10 government websites in Delhi lacking in several transparency parameters, according to a report in The Economic Times.
Tanzania: “Tanzania is drafting its open data policy as part of the global movements that seek to broaden data and information access to ensure transparency and accountability in all governments activities,” writes Sylivester Domasa in the Tanzania Daily News.
Open Data: A map of 2,600+ open data portals around the world.
Philippines: An analysis of the new FOI executive order by Tony La Vina in The Manila Standard.
Australia: “Does the government plan to profit by selling government data?” is the headline for an article by Alex Malley, chief executive of CPA Australia. He sees “a clear conflict between the policy of providing public data for free and providing an economic incentive to a private sector operator.”
United States/Oregon: Proposed reforms to Oregon’s public records law get a critical review, The Bend Bulletin reports.
Open Data: The White House will host its first-ever Open Data Innovation Summit at Data Transparency 2016 on Sept. 28 in Washington, DC. See an announcement and a call for participation.
Open Contracting: The Obama Administration issues final guidance for the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces executive order, which will require companies to disclose violations for 14 labor law protections that occurred in the past three years. The violations requiring disclosure are those considered serious, repeated, willful and pervasive, reports Federal News Radio.
Open Source: The White House issues a Federal Source Code policy saying any new custom source code developed “by or for the Federal Government” has to be made available for sharing and re-use by all federal agencies, according to TechCrunch article that also discusses what might be made public.
Colombia: President Juan Manuel Santos published his entire Cabinet’s tax returns as part of an anti-corruption push, ABC News reports.
Australia: Victoria’s Commissioner for Privacy and Data Protection, David Watts, lashed out at the government’s handling of a new FOI law, reports Benjamin Preiss in The Age.
United States: Transparency advocates seek to block FOIA changes to requested by the Defense Department, saying that approving them would allow the Pentagon to “excuse itself from the hard fought and necessary reforms,” according to The Washington Post.
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