Latest Features
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31 December 2015
Rwanda: ATI Implementation Constrained
By Dr. Joseph Nkurunziza and Prisca Ntabaza Nkurunziza is a medical doctor and the founder and president of the board of Never Again Rwanda. Ntabaza is the programme officer for the Governance and Rights Programmme of Never Again Rwanda. This report is one of the chapters in the State of RTI in Africa Report 2015. Reprinted […]
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23 December 2015
RTI in China: The Article 19 Report
The following chapter is from the Article 19 report on the right to Information in Southeast Asia. Constitutional Framework China’s Constitution does not expressly mention the right to information but grants Chinese citizens freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration. Right to Information Act The path towards […]
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22 December 2015
RTI and Progress on Anti-Corruption Efforts
By Ayode Longe and Edetaen Ojo Longe is Programme Manager and Ojo is Executive Director of Media Rights Agenda. This report is one of the chapters in the State of RTI in Africa Report 2015. Reprinted with permission. Some, but not all, footnotes have been converted to hot links. The Nigerian Freedom of Information (FOI) […]
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1 December 2015
Right to Information, Wrongs of Implementation
By Zahid Abdullah The author is associated with Centre for Peace and Development Initiatives and coordinator of Coalition on Right to Information. Follow him on Twitter at @XahidAbdullah This article was published Nov. 28 in The Tribune and is reprinted with permission. Other than the insertion of Article 19-A in the Constitution through the 18th Amendment, major political […]
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23 November 2015
Ten Years of RTI in India: A New Breed of Activism and Citizenship
By Aruna Roy and Nikhil Dey Roy and Dey are social activists and members of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan and the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information. This article first appeared in The Hindu and is reprinted with permission. The Right to Information (RTI) Act has completed 10 years of implementation. According to […]
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12 November 2015
Algeria Urged to Pass a FOI Law
By Peter Katonene Mwesigwa The author is Legal & Research Officer for the African Freedom of Information Centre. This chapter, reprinted with permission, is part of the AFIC’s RTI in Africa Report 2015. Introduction Algeria faces deep social, economic and political challenges. Ailing President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s was re–elected to a fourth term5 In 2014 and […]
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22 October 2015
Article 19: The Right to Information in Thailand
The following article was part of a report on the right to information in Asia published by Article 19. Reprinted with permission. The turbulent history of Thailand is reflected in the number of constitutions the country has adopted since the overthrow of the monarchy in 1932.[i] The right to information was first recognised by the […]
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13 October 2015
SECRET CIA REPORT: Pinochet “Personally Ordered” Washington Car-Bombing
Washington D.C., October 8, 2015 – The CIA concluded that there was “convincing evidence” that Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet “personally ordered his intelligence chief to carry out the murder” of exiled critic Orlando Letelier in Washington D.C., according to a SECRET memo prepared for President Ronald Reagan in 1987. “Pinochet decided to stonewall on the […]
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9 October 2015
Prime Minister Abe Subverts Japan’s Public Records Act
By Lawrence Repeta The author is a professor of law at Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan. Japan’s open government activists hailed the adoption of the national Public Records and Archives Management Act (“Public Records Act”) as a milestone in government accountability. When that law took effect on April 1, 2011, government agencies were legally required to […]
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30 September 2015
RTI Activists in Ghana Face Big Challenge
By Ugonna Ukaigwe The author is the Project Co-ordinator of the Right to Information Coalition in Ghana. Citizens’ access to Information (ATI) held by public institutions is recognised globally as a fundamental Right with very limited exceptions. However, in some countries including Ghana, this right appears to be the exception rather than the norm. Despite […]
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17 September 2015
What Is Transparency?
By Ben Worthy The author is lecturer in Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London, and runs the website OpenDataStudy, where this article first appeared. Through what media, cultural, activist and commercial forms do people learn about transparency issues? What are the dominant messages on transparency? There are a number of ways through which the […]
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14 September 2015
MuckRock to let users track projects and contribute to costs
By Joseph Lichterman The author is a staff writer at NiemanLab where article was first published under a Creative Commons license. For the past year, Beryl C.D. Lipton has been investigating the private prison system in the United States. She’s a reporter for MuckRock, a news site that covers government transparency issues and also helps its users access government documents. […]
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10 September 2015
Brazil: Transparency for Some, Opacity for Most
By Marina Iemini Atoji The author is executive manager of Abraji, the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism, and runs its training for journalists on Brazilian freedom of information law. She is also executive secretary for the Forum for Access to Public Information, a coalition of 25 entities coordinated by Abraji that successfully lobbied for Brazil’s freedom of information […]
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27 August 2015
FOI and eyes wide shut: even public servants want to know
By Suelette Dreyfuss The author is a research fellow in Computing and Information Systems at the University of Melbourne and part of an international team looking at the impact of technology on whistleblowing about wrongdoing. She is author of the 1997 book, Underground: Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier. This is an expanded version […]
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20 August 2015
FOI Advocates: Stop Re-Inventing the Wheel Today!
By Tania Sanchez The author is the Open Government Guide Lead at the Transparency & Accountability Initiative. Over the past months, I’ve been working on updating and expanding the Open Government Guide, and it’s been a real eye opener in terms of the immense number of ways to make governments more transparent and accountable, worldwide. It’s […]
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29 July 2015
India: How we fail our RTI heroes
By Manu Moudgil This article, reprinted with permission, first appeared July 20 in The Hoot, an independent initiative of the Media Foundation based in New Delhi. Another recent Hoot story, by Geeta Seshu, also addressed the issue and possible solutions. The Indian government recently announced plans to gather more statistics on the deaths of RTI activists. (See previous FreedomInfo.org […]
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29 July 2015
India: Tardy working of info panels
By Anjali Bhardwaj and Amrita Johri The writers are RTI activists and members of the National Campaign for Peoples’ Right to Information, New Delhi. This article first appeared in The Deccan Herald July 27 and is reprinted with permission. Under the RTI Act, independent Information Commissions (ICs) have been set up at the Centre and […]
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9 July 2015
United Kingdom: The Case Against Government FOI Proposals
This post is from the website of the Campaign for Freedom of Information. The Government is likely to be considering three sets of new restrictions to the FOI Act. These are likely to involve: (1) preventing the disclosure of government policy discussions (2) strengthening the ministerial veto (3) making it easier for authorities to refuse FOI […]
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7 July 2015
Ghana: The Right to Information and Trade Secrets
By Dr. Mohammed Amin Adam The author is Executive Director of the Africa Centre for Energy Policy. This article appeared July 2 in The Chronicle. Introduction The debate over whether trade secrets undermine transparency and promote corruption continues to dominate discussions on Africa’s growing governance landscape. Often difficult to define because of its many faces […]
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1 July 2015
FOIA Compliance Low in Nigeria
This commentary was posted June 29, 2015, on the website of Center for Social Justice in Nigeria. The Freedom of Information Act 2011, according to its long title, was made as an Act to make public records and information more freely available, provide for public access to public records and information, protect public records and […]