Latest Features
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28 April 2016
When right to information helps the wrong people
By Shailesh Ghandi This author is a former Indian information commissioner. This commentary was originally published in The Times of India. Recently, a newspaper reported that an information commissioner of the Tamil Nadu State Information Commission (TNSIC) had likened RTI applications to frivolous public interest litigation. TNSIC officials feel that of late, they have been […]
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14 April 2016
Challenges to implementing RTI laws in Asia
By Gambhir Bhatta The author is Technical Advisor (Governance), Sustainable Development and Climate Change Department at the Asian Development Bank. This article was published on the Asian Development Blog. In recent years there has been one critical instrument to making governments more responsive to citizens in how they provide services – the right to information. […]
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14 April 2016
Is RTI Bill Sri Lanka Leaving Victims Behind?
By Gehan Gunatilleke The author is a human rights lawyer based in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and the Research Director of Verité Research. He is the author of The Right to Information in Sri Lanka: A Guide for Advocates (2014). He is also a Commonwealth scholar at New College, University of Oxford. Follow him on twitter […]
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13 April 2016
Right to Information – Is it catching on in Bangladesh?
By Shamsul Bari and Ruhi Naz The writers are Chairman, Research Initiatives, Bangladesh (RIB) and Project Coordinator (RTI Section) of RIB, respectively. This article originally appeared April 13, 2016, in The Daily Star. There are different ways to measure how the Right to Information (RTI) regime is working in a country. A common measure is to […]
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13 April 2016
Right to Information and Blackmailing
By Er Irfan Ali Banka The author was working as Junior Engineer (Civil) for the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir “but felt it necessary to resign on 29th of January, 2016, because of huge corruption in the departments.” I work as a Social/RTI Activist. I am Founder & Secretary, In-Minds Society (J&K) and also District Coordinator, […]
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6 April 2016
Dostup do Pravdy: the secret of FOI success
This article was originally posted April 1 on the website of mySociety, the UK NGO that developed the FOI software Alaveteli. Last week, Ukrainian Freedom of Information site Dostup do Pravdy processed its 10,000th FOI request. That’s pretty impressive, given that they launched just a couple of years ago, in 2014. We offer hearty congratulations to the Dostup […]
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30 March 2016
Digital Bangladesh – Right to information and climate finance
By Saleemul Huq The author is Director, International Centre for Climate Change and Development, Independent University, Bangladesh. This article originally appeared in Business on March 30. As Bangladesh and the world enters post-2015 era with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and Sendai Action Plan on Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) – […]
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24 March 2016
OGP Has Failed as Platform for FOI in The Philippines
By Nepomuceno Malaluan The author is a Trustee of Action for Economic Reforms (AER), an independent policy analysis and advocacy organization working on macroeconomic and governance issues. He is also Co-Director of the Institute for Freedom of Information, a partnership program of AER and the Philippine Center of Investigative Journalism, and Co-Convener of the Right […]
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24 March 2016
J&K Government Failing to Implement RTI Act Effectively
By Er Irfan Ali Banka The author was working as Junior Engineer (Civil) in J&K REW, Govt. of J&K “but felt it necessary to resign on 29th of January, 2016, because of huge corruption in the departments.” I work as a Social/RTI Activist. I am Founder & Secretary, In-Minds Society (J&K) and also District Coordinator, J&K […]
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16 March 2016
Federal Agencies Fail to File Key Report on Email Management
By Lauren Harper The author is a staff member of the National Security Archive, the publisher of FreedomInfo.org, which published this report March 14. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Department of the Treasury’s Comptroller, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) are among a handful of agencies that have already admitted they will not meet […]
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16 March 2016
Next Step: Reconciling 2 US FOIA Reform Bills
By Nate Jones The author is the Director of the Freedom of Information Act Project for the National Security Archive, the publisher of FreedomInfo.org. Proving again that the Freedom of Information Act may be the last bastion of bipartisanship in Washington DC, Senators Patrick Leahy, John Cornyn, and Chuck Grassley today marked Sunshine Week by passing the […]
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10 March 2016
Will RTI Ever Be Promulgated in Tanzania?
By Deus Kibamba The author is trained in Political Science, International Politics and International Law. This article first appeared The Citizen. There are things worthy of not forgetting in life. One of such very memorable landmarks during the Fourth Phase government of Dr Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete is his 10-year promise to legislate for the right […]
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22 February 2016
China Promotes Open Government as it Seeks to Reinvent Its Governance Model
By Jamie P. Horsley The author is a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, on leave from the Yale Law School China Center. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author. China’s recent actions under Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping at home and abroad have prompted many observers to […]
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22 February 2016
Does FOI Work? An Academic Review
By Ben Worthy, Peter John and Matia Vannoni The following is an excerpt from a larger paper that shows FOIA requests to be more effective than informal inquiries in small government entities in the United Kingdom. The paper: “Transparency at the Parish Pump: A Field Experiment to Measure the Effectiveness of Freedom of Information Requests,” […]
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15 February 2016
Where is transparency in the hype cycle?
By Rupert Simons The author is the chief executive office of Publish What You Fund. This column first appeared Feb. 11, 20 2016 in the PWFP blog. Development fashions go through predictable stages. At first, breathless blog posts proclaim the idea: budget support, microfinance, laptops. Soon, governments and funders are jumping over themselves to adopt […]
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4 February 2016
Access Should Be Granted to Indian`356’ Reports
By Venkatesh Nayak The author is Programme Coordinator, Access to Information Programme, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative. The border State of Arunachal Pradesh in the northeastern corner of India in the news again – for all the wrong reasons – again. For several weeks crisis had been brewing over the existence or the lack of majority support […]
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3 February 2016
Right to Information – A catalyst for change in Bangladesh
By Shamsul Bari and Ruhi Naz The authors are Chairman, Research Initiatives, Bangladesh (RIB) and Project Coordinator (RTI section) of RIB respectively. This article originally appeared in The Daily Star. Talking to citizen’s groups in different parts of the country recently, two things came out clearly. One, there is a slow but steady increase in […]
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17 January 2016
How the Senate Should Fix the FOIA Reform Bill
By Aaron Mackey This article was first published Jan. 15 by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Mackey is the EFF Frank Stanton Legal Fellow. With the U.S. House of Representatives passing a bill this week to amend the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), EFF and a coalition of other groups are calling on members of the Senate […]
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17 January 2016
US FOIA Fee Survey Results
By Lauren Harper This article was first published Jan. 15 in Unredacted, a sister blog from the National Security Archive. The Unredacted version includes some additional charts. What percentage of agency FOIA costs did Congress intend agencies to recover through FOIA fees? All? Most? Half? Something else? It’s impossible to say since the Office of […]
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31 December 2015
Bangladesh: Article 19 Analyzes Challenges
The following chapter is from the 2015 Article 19 report, Asia Disclosed: A Review of the Right to Information across Asia. The original is replete with footnotes, not included here. Constitutional Framework Article 39 of the Bangladeshi Constitution guarantees the right of every citizen to freedom of speech and expression and freedom of the press, and […]